Industrialize—And Perish!

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

NAVAJIVAN PUBLISHING HOUSE
AHMED AB AD- 14

BOOKS BY GANDHIJI

Rs.P.

An Autobiography

(De luxe Edition) 7.00

(Standard ,, ) 4.00

(Popular j, ) 2.00

(Abridged „ ) 2.00

(School „ ) 1.50

All Men Are Brothers 3.00

Basic Education 1.00

Co-operation 0.75

Ethos of Non-violence 1.50

Fasting in Satyagraha 1.00

Gift of Gold 0.40

Key to Health 0.50

My Non-violence 5.00

My Religion 2.00

Nature Cure 0.75

Sarvodaya (The Welfare
of All) 2.00

Satyagraha 4.00

Stonewalls Do not a Prison

Make 2.50

The Law & the Lawyers 3.00

The Problem of Education 3.50
The Way to Communal

Harmony 8.00

To the Students 4.00

Towards New Education 1.00

True Education 3.50

Village Swaraj 3.00

Women 1.00

Women and Social Injustice 2.00

Postage etc . extra

Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad-14

/

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Public.Resource.Org

https://archive.org/details/industrializeandOOgand

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH !

BY

M. K. GANDHI

Compiled by
R. K. PRABHU

NAVAJIVAN PUBLISHING MOUSE
AHMED AB AD- 14

First Edition, 2,000 Copies, February 1966

Rs. 2.50

© The JVavajivan Trust , 1966

Printed and Published by Jivanji Dahyabhai Desai,
Navajivan Press, Ahmedabad-14

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

We are happy to publish this booklet compiled by
Shri R. K. Prabhu. The title of the booklet conveys
its contents. It may be recalled that a last solemn
warning, so to say, to India and through India to the
world was uttered by Mahatma Gandhi in a letter
addressed by him to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in
October, 1945. In this letter he declared that the
reckless urbanization of civilization which is proceed¬
ing apace all over the world, including India, con¬
stitutes a serious menace to the progress of mankind,
since in the crowded cities people will never be able to
live in peace with one another without resort to
violence and untruth, that non-violence and truth can
be realized only in the simplicity of village life and
that without truth and non-violence there can be
nothing but destruction for humanity. He maintained
that it is possible for man’s all real needs, material
and spiritual, to be met in villages, suitably remodell¬
ed in the light of modern science. Such remodell¬
ing of villages, therefore, is the only means to avoid
the menace of reckless industrialization and the modern
cities which are its brood.

We hope the booklet will be appreciated.
30-1-1966

111

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

publisher’s note iii

1 THIS SATANIC CIVILIZATION 3

2 MODERN CITIES SPELL DOOM OF HUMANITY 8

. 3 DECLINE IN URBAN MORALS 12

4 WESTERN DEMOCRACIES ONLY IN NAME 15

5 THE CRAZE FOR MACHINERY 18

6 WARNINGS FROM HISTORY 25

7 IF INDIA BECOMES INDUSTRIALIZED 28

8 OUR CRIMINAL NEGLECT OF OUR VILLAGES 33

9 IF THE VILLAGE PERISHES INDIA WILL PERISH

TOO 37

10 WHY THE VILLAGE INDUSTRIES MOVEMENT 42

11 MASS PRODUCTION V. PRODUCTION BY THE

MASSES 48

12 HUMANITARIAN INDUSTRIAL POLICY FOR INDIA 56

13 THE MACHINE NO ONE CAN OUST 62

14 A SACRED LAW OF OUR BEING 66

15 RURAL DEMOCRACY IN ACTION 70

16 MY IDEAL VILLAGE 73

17 ECONOMIC V. MORAL PROGRESS 79

18 THE RICH AND THE POOR 84

19 ECONOMIC EQUALITY 87

20 IS CLASS WAR INEVITABLE? 91

21 RIGHTS OR DUTIES? 95

22 LABOUR SHOULD KNOW ITS STRENGTH 97

23 LAND TO THE TILLER 100

24 THE WEAPON OF SATYAGRAHA 104

25 BREAD LABOUR 105

26 TRUSTEESHIP THE ONLY SAFE SOLUTION 109

27 A CALL TO YOUTH 111

28 OUR FUTURE FROM OUR PAST 114

29 THE WORLD OF TOMORROW 117

IV

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH !

'

TO THE READER

I would like to say to the diligent reader of my
writings and to others who are interested in them
that I am not at all concerned with appearing to be
consistent. In my search after Truth I have discarded
many ideas and learnt many new things. Old as I
am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to
grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dis¬
solution of the flesh. What I am concerned with is
my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from
moment to moment, and, therefore, when anybody
finds any inconsistency between any two writings
of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would
do well to choose the later of the two on the same
subject.

M. K. Gandhi

Hcirijan , 29-4-1933, p. 2.

CHAPTER 1

THIS SATANIC CIVILIZATION

It is my firm opinion that Europe today re¬
presents not the spirit of God or Christianity but the
spirit of Satan. And Satan’s successes are the great¬
est when he appears with the name of God on his
lips. Europe is today only nominally Christian. It is
really worshipping Mammon. Tt is easier for a
camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the Kingdom.’ Thus really spoke
Jesus Christ. His so-called followers measure their
moral progress by their material possessions.

Young India, 8-9-1920, p. 237

Formerly, when people wanted to fight with one
another, they measured between them their bodily
strength; now it is possible to take away thousands
of lives by one man working behind a gun from a
hill. This is civilization. Formerly, men worked in
open air only as much as they liked. Now thousands
of workmen meet together and for the sake of main¬
tenance work in factories or mines. Their condition
is worse than that of beasts. They are obliged to work,
at the risk of their lives, at most dangerous occu¬
pations, for the sake of millionaires. . . . This civi¬
lization is such that one has only to be patient and it
will be self-destroyed.

Hind Swaraj (1962), pp. 36-37

I am not aiming at destroying railways or hospi¬
tals, though I would certainly welcome their natural

3

4

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

destruction. Neither railways nor hospitals are a test
of a high and pure civilization. At best they are a
necessary evil. Neither adds one inch to the moral
stature of a nation. Nor am I aiming at a permanent
destruction of law courts much as I regard it as a ‘con¬
summation devoutly to be wished for’. Still less am I
trying to destroy all machinery and mills. It requires
a higher simplicity and renunciation than the people
are today prepared for.

Young India, 26-1-1921, p. 27

If I preach against the modern artificial life of
sensual enjoyment, and ask men and women to go
back to the simple life epitomized in the Charkha,
I do so because I know, that without an intelli¬
gent return to simplicity, there is no escape from our
descent to a state lower than brutality.

Young India, 21-7-1921, p. 228

I do want growth, I do want self-determination,
I do want freedom, but I want all these for the soul.
I doubt if the steel age is an advance upon the flint
age. I am indifferent. It is the evolution of the soul
to which the intellect and all our faculties have to be
devoted.

Young India, 13-10-1921, p. 325

Is the world any the better for those quick instru¬
ments of locomotion? How do these instruments
advance man’s spiritual progress? Do they not in the
last resort hamper it? And is there any limit to man’s
ambition? Once we were satisfied with travelling
a few miles an hour; today we want to negotiate hun¬
dreds of miles an hour; one day we might desire to
fly through space. What will be the result? Chaos.

Young India, 21-1-1926, p. 31

THIS SATANIC CIVILIZATION

5

I wholeheartedly detest this mad desire to des¬
troy distance and time, to increase animal appetites,
and go to the ends of the earth in search of their
satisfaction. If modern civilization stands for all this,
and I have understood it to do so, I call it satanic.

Young India, 17-3-1927, p. 85

A time is coming when those, who are in the
mad rush today of multiplying their wants, vainly
thinking that they add to the real substance, real
knowledge of the world, will retrace their steps and
say: ‘What have we done?5 Civilizations have come
and gone, and in spite of all our vaunted progress
I am tempted to ask again and again ‘To what pur¬
pose?5 Wallace, a contemporary of Darwin, has said
the same thing. Fifty years of brilliant inventions
and discoveries, he has said, has not added one inch
to the moral height of mankind. So said a dreamer
and visionary if you will — Tolstoy. So said Jesus,
and Buddha, and Muhammad, whose religion is
being denied and falsified in my own country today.

Young India , 8-12-1927, p. 414

By all means drink deep of the fountains that are
given to you in the Sermon on the Mount, but then
you will have to take sackcloth and ashes. The
teaching of the Sermon was meant for* each and
every one of us. You cannot serve both God and
Mammon. God the Compassionate and the Merci¬
ful, Tolerance incarnate, allows Mammon to have
his nine days5 wonder. But I say to you ... fly
from that self-destroying but destructive show of
Mammon.

Young India , 8-12-1927, p. 414

6

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

The fact is that this industrial civilization is a
disease because it is all evil. Let us not be de¬
ceived by catchwords and phrases. I have no quarrel
with steamships or telegraphs. They may stay, if they
can, without the support of industrialism and all it
connotes. They are not an end. We must not suffer
exploitation for the sake of steamships and telegraphs.
They are in no way indispensable for the permanent
welfare of the human race. . . . India has withstood
the onslaughts of other civilizations because she has
stood firm on her own ground. Not that she has not
made changes. But the changes she has made have
promoted her growth. To change to industrialism is
to court disaster. . . . Our concern is, therefore, to
destroy industrialism at any cost. The present dis¬
tress is undoubtedly insufferable. Pauperism must
go. But industrialism is no remedy. . . .

Toung India, 7-10-1926, p. 348

India’s destiny lies not along the bloody way of
the West, of which she shows signs of tiredness, but
along the bloodless way of peace that comes from a
simple and godly life. India is in danger of losing
her soul. She cannot lose it and live. She must not
therefore lazily and helplessly say, T cannot escape
the onrush from the West.’ She must be strong enough
to resist it for her own sake and that of the world.

Toung India, 7-10-1926, p. 348

What is the cause of the present chaos? It is ex¬
ploitation, I will not say, of the weaker nations by the
stronger, but of sister nations by sister nations. And
my fundamental objection to machinery rests on the
fact that it is machinery that has enabled these nations
to exploit others. In itself it is a wooden thing and

THIS SATANIC CIVILIZATION

7

can be turned to good purpose or bad. But it is easily
turned to a bad purpose as we know.

Toung India, 22-10-1931, p. 318

Machinery is like a snake-hole which may con¬
tain from one to a hundred snakes. Where there is
machinery, there are large cities ; and where there
are large cities, there are tram-cars and railways; and
there only does one see electric light. Honest physi¬
cians will tell you that where means of artificial loco¬
motion have increased, the health of the people has
suffered. I remember that when in a European town
there was scarcity of money, the receipts of the tram¬
way company, of the lawyers and of the doctors went
down , and the people were less unhealthy. I cannot
recall a single good point in connection with machi¬
nery.

Hind Swaraj (1962), p. 96

European civilization is no doubt suited for the
Europeans, but it will mean ruin for India, if we en¬
deavour to copy it. This is not to say that we may
not adopt and assimilate whatever may be good
and capable of assimilation by us, as it does not also
mean that even the Europeans will not have to part
with whatever evil might have crept into it. The in¬
cessant search for material comforts and their multi¬
plication is such an evil; and I make bold to say that
the Europeans themselves will have to remodel their
outlook, if they are not to perish under the weight
of the comforts to which they are becoming slaves.
It may be that my reading is wrong, but I know that
for India to run after the Golden Fleece is to court
certain death. Let us engrave on our hearts the motto of
a Western philosopher, ‘Plain living and high thinking’.
Toung India, 30-4-1931, p. 83

8

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

Civilization, in the real sense of the term, con¬
sists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate
and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone pro¬
motes real happiness and contentment, and increa¬
ses the capacity for service.

From Teravda Mandir (1935), Chap. 6

CHAPTER 2

MODERN CITIES SPELL DOOM OF

HUMANITY

[From a letter to Pandit Ja\yaharlal Nehru, dated 5-10-1945]

I am convinced that if India is to attain true
freedom and through India the world also, then sooner
or later the fact must be recognized that people will
have to live in villages, not in towns, in huts, not
in palaces. Crores of people will never be able to live
at peace with each other in towns and palaces. They
will then have no recourse but to resort to both vio¬
lence and untruth.

I hold that without truth and non-violence there
can be nothing but destruction for humanity. We
can realize truth and non-violence only in the simpli¬
city of village life and this simplicity can best be found
in the Charkha and all that the Charkha connotes.
I must not fear if the world today is going the wrong
way. It may be that India too will go that way and
like the proverbial moth burn itself eventually in the
flame round which it dances more and more fiercely.
But it is my bounden duty up to my last breath to
try to protect India and through India the entire
world from such a doom.

The essence of what I have said is that man
should rest content with what are his real needs and

MODERN CITIES SPELL DOOM OF HUMANITY 9

become self-sufficient. If he does not have this con¬
trol, he cannot save himself. After all, the world
is made up of individuals just as it is the drops that
constitute the ocean. . . . This is a well known
truth. . . .

While I admire modern science, I find that it is
the old looked at in the true light of modern science
which should be reclothed and refashioned aright.
You must not imagine that I am envisaging our vil¬
lage life as it is today. The village of my dreams is still
in my mind. After all, every man lives in the world
of his dreams. My ideal village will contain intelli¬
gent human beings. They will not live in dirt and
darkness as animals. Men and women will be free
and able to hold their own against anyone in the
world. There will be neither plague, nor cholera,
nor small-pox; no-one will be idle, no-one will wallow
in luxury. Everyone will have to contribute his quota
of manual labour. ... It is possible to envisage
railways, post and telegraph . . . and the like. . . .

Towards New Horizons , (1959), pp. 4-5

There are two schools of thought current in the
world. One wants to divide the world into cities and
the other into villages. The village civilization and
the city civilization are totally different things. One
depended on machinery and industrialization, the
other rested on handicraft. We have given preference
to the latter.

After all, this industrialization and large-scale
production was only of comparatively recent growth.
We do not know how far it has contributed to our
development and happiness, but we know this much
that it has brought in its wake recent world wars.

10

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

This second world war is not still over and even before
it comes to an end we are hearing of a third world
war. Our country was never so unhappy and mise¬
rable as it is at present. In the cities people may be
getting big profits and good wages but all that has
become possible by sucking the blood of the villages.

Hindustan Standard , 6-12-1944

It is the city man who is responsible for war
all over the world, never the villager.

Gleanings , (1949), p. 17

I regard the growth of cities as an evil thing, un¬
fortunate for mankind and the world, unfortunate for
England and certainly unfortunate for India. The
British have exploited India through its cities. The
latter have exploited the villages. The blood of the
villages is the cement with which the edifice of the
cities is built. I want the blood that is today inflating
the arteries of the cities to run once again in the
blood vessels of the villages.

Harijan, 23-6-1946, p. 198

The half a dozen modern cities are an excrescence
and serve at the present moment the evil purpose of
draining the life-blood of the villages. . . . The cities
with their insolent torts are a constant menace to the
life and liberty of the villagers.

Young India , 17-3-1 92 7, p. 86

We may not be deceived by the wealth to be
seen in the cities of India. It does not come from
England or America. It comes from the blood of the
poorest. There are said to be seven lakhs of villages
in India. Some of them have simply been wiped out.
No one has any record of those thousands who have

MODERN CITIES SPELL DOOM OF HUMANITY 1 1

died of starvation and disease, in Bengal, Karnatak
-and elsewhere. The Government registers can give
no idea of what the village folk are going through.
But being a villager myself, I know the condition in
the villages. I know village economics. I tell you
that the pressure from the top crushes those at the
bottom.

Arnrita Bazar Patwika, 30-6-1934

The workers in the mills of Bombay have be¬
come slaves. The condition of the women working
in the mills is shocking. When there were no mills,
these women were not starving. If the machinery
craze grows in our country, it will become an unhappy
land. It may be considered a heresy, but I am bound
to say that it were better for us to send money to Man¬
chester and to use flimsy Manchester cloth than to
multiply mills in India. By using Manchester cloth
we only waste our money; but by reproducing Man¬
chester in India, we shall keep our money at the price
of our blood, because our very moral being will be
sapped, and I call in support of my statement the
very mill-hands as witnesses. And those who have
amassed wealth out of factories are not likely to be
better than other rich men. It would be folly to as¬
sume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than
the American Rockefeller. Impoverished India can
become free, but it will be hard for any India made
rich through immorality to regain its freedom. . . .
Money renders a man helpless. The other thing
which is equally harmful is sexual vice. Both are poi¬
son. A snake-bite is a lesser poison than these two,
because the former merely destroys the body but the
latter destroy body, mind and soul. We need not,

12

INDUSTRIALIZE— AND PERISH !

therefore, be pleased with the prospect of the growth
of the mill-industry.

Hind Swaraj , (1962), p. 94

You cannot build non-violence on a factory
civilization, but it can be built on self-contained vil¬
lages. Even if Hitler was so minded, he could not
devastate seven hundred thousand non-violent vil¬
lages. He would himself become non-violent in the
process. Rural economy, as I have conceived it,
eschews exploitation altogether, and exploitation is
the essence of violence. You have, therefore, to be
rural-minded before you can be non-violent, and to
be rural-minded you have to have faith in the spin¬
ning wheel.

Harijan, 4-11-1939, p. 331

CHAPTER 3

DECLINE IN URBAN MORALS

[From a lecture delivered byQandhiji at a meeting of the Muir
Central College Economic Society, held at Allahabad on
22-12-1916.]

That you cannot serve God and Mammon is an
economic truth of the highest value. We have to
make our choice. Western nations are today groaning
under the heel of the monster god of materialism.
They measure their progress in £.s.d. American wealth
has become the standard. She is the envy of the
other nations. I have heard many of our country¬
men say that we will gain American wealth but
avoid its methods. I venture to suggest that such an
attempt, if it were made, is foredoomed to failure.
We cannot be ‘wise, temperate and furious’ in a

DECLINE IN URBAN MORALS

13

moment. I would have our leaders teach us to be
morally supreme in the world. This land of ours was
once, we are told, the abode of the Gods. It is not
possible to conceive Gods inhabiting a land which is
made hideous by the smoke and the din of mill chim¬
neys and factories and whose roadways are tra¬
versed by rushing engines, dragging numerous cars
crowded with men who know not for the most part
what they are after, who are often absent-minded,
and whose tempers do not improve by being uncom¬
fortably packed like sardines in boxes and finding
themselves in the midst of utter strangers, who would
oust them if they could and whom they would, in their
turn, oust similarly. I refer to these things because
they are held to be symbolical of material progress.
But they add not an atom to our happiness. This
is what Wallace, the great scientist, has said as his
deliberate judgment:

“In the earliest records which have come down to
us from the past, we find ample indications that general
ethical considerations and conceptions, the accepted stan¬
dard of morality, and the conduct resulting from these,
were in no degree inferior to those which prevail today.”

In a series of chapters he then proceeds to exa¬
mine the position of the English nation under the ad¬
vance in wealth it has made. He says: “This rapid
growth of wealth and increase of our power over
Nature put too great a strain upon our crude civiliza¬
tion, on our superficial Christianity, and it was ac¬
companied by various forms of social immorality al¬
most as amazing and unprecedented.” He then shows
how factories have risen on the corpses of men,
women and children, how, as the country has rapidly

14

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

advanced in riches, it has gone down in morality. He
shows this by dealing with insanitation, life-destroy¬
ing trades, adulteration, bribery and gambling. He
shows how with the advance of wealth, justice has.
become immoral, deaths from alcoholism and suicide
have increased, the average of premature births and
congenital defects has increased and prostitution has
become an institution. He concludes his examina¬
tion with these pregnant remarks:

‘‘The proceedings of the divorce courts show other aspects
of the result of wealth and lesiure, while a friend who had
been a good deal in London society assured me that, both in-
country houses and in London, various kinds of orgies were
occasionally to be met with, which w,ould hardly have been
surpassed in the period of the most dissolute emperors. Of
war, too, I need say nothing. It has always been more or
less chronic since the rise of the Roman Empire; but there
is now undoubtedly a disinclination for war among all
civilized peoples. Yet the vast burden of armaments, taken
together with the most pious declarations in favour of peace,,
must be held to shpw an almpst total absence of morality
as a guiding principle among the governing classes.”

Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi , Natesan, pp. 353-56

‘You have called cities boils or abscesses on the
body politic. What should be done with these boils?5

If you ask a doctor he will tell you what to da
with a boil. It has to be cured either by lancing or
by the application of plasters and poultices. Edward
Carpenter called civilization a malady which needed
a cure. The growth of big cities is only a symptom of
that malady. Being a nature curist, I am naturally
in favour of nature’s way of cure by a general purifica¬
tion of the system. If the hearts of the city-dwellers

WESTERN DEMOCRACIES ONLY IN NAME

15

remain rooted in the villages, if they become truly
village-minded, all other things will automatically
follow and the boil will quickly heal.

Harijan, 28-5-1946, p. 282

CHAPTER 4

WESTERN DEMOCRACIES ONLY IN NAME

Democracy of the West is, in my opinion, only
so-called. It has germs in it, certainly, of the true
type. But it can only come when all violence is
eschewed and malpractices disappear. The two go
hand in hand. Indeed, malpractice is a species of
violence. If India is to evolve the true type, there
should be no compromise with violence or untruth..

Harijan, 3-9-1938, p. 242

There is no escape from the impending doom save
through a bold and unconditional acceptance of the
non-violent method with all its glorious implications.
Democracy and violence can ill go together. The States
that are today nominally democratic have either to
become frankly totalitarian or, if they are to become
truly democratic, they must become courageously
non-violent. It is a blasphemy to say that non-vio¬
lence can only be practised by individuals and never
by nations which are composed of individuals.

Harijan, 12-11-1938, p. 328

*

I feel that fundamentally the disease is the same
in Europe as it is in India, in spite of the fact that
in the former country the people enjoy political self-
government. . . .

16

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

Asian and African races are exploited for their
partial benefit, and they, on their part, are being ex¬
ploited by the ruling class or caste under the sacred
name of democracy. At the root, therefore, the disease
appears to be the same as in India. The same remedy
is, therefore, likely to be applicable. Shorn of all ca¬
mouflage, the exploitation of the masses of Europe is
sustained by violence.

Violence on the part of the masses will never
remove the disease. Anyway up to now experience
shows that success of violence has been short-lived.
It has led to greater violence. What has been tried
hitherto has been a variety of violence and artificial
checks dependent mainly upon the will of the violent.
At the crucial moment these checks have naturally
broken down. It seems to me, therefore, that sooner
or later, the European masses will have to take to
non-violence if they are to find their deliverance.
That there is no hope of their taking to it in a body
and at once does not baffle me. A few thousand years
are but a speck in the vast time circle. Someone has
to make a beginning with a faith that will not flinch.
I doubt not that the masses, even of Europe, will re¬
spond, but what is more emergent in point of time is
not so much a large experiment in non-violence as a
precise grasp of the meaning of deliverance. From
what will the masses be delivered? It will not do to
have a vague generalization and to answer ‘from ex¬
ploitation and degradation’. Is not the answer this
that they want to occupy the status that capital does
today? If so, it can be attained only by violence.
But if they want to shun the evils of capital, in other
words, if they would revise the view-point of capital,
they would strive to attain a juster distribution of the

WESTERN DEMOCRACIES ONLY IN NAME 17

products of labour. This immediately takes us to
contentment and simplicity, voluntarily adopted.
Under the new outlook multiplicity of material wants
will not be the aim of life, the aim will be rather
restriction consistently with comfort. We shall cease
to think of getting what we can but we shall decline
to receive what all cannot get. It occurs to me that
it ought not to be difficult to make successful appeal to
the masses of Europe in terms of economics and a
fairly successful working of such an experiment must
lead to immense and unconscious spiritual results. I
do not believe that the spiritual law works in a field
of its own. On the contrary, it expresses itself only
through the ordinary activities of life. It thus affects
the economic, the social and the political fields.

If the masses of Europe can be persuaded to adopt
the view I have suggested, it will be found that violence
will be wholly unnecessary to attain the aim and they
can easily come to their own by following out the
obvious corollaries of non-violence. It may even be
that what seems to me to be so natural and feasible
for India, may take longer to permeate the inert Indian
masses than the active European masses. But I must
reiterate my confession that all my argument is based
on suppositions and assumptions and must, therefore,
be taken for what it is worth.

Young India , 3-9-1925, p. 304

I believe that in the history of the world, there
has not been a more genuinely democratic struggle
for freedom than ours. I read Carlyle’s History of the
French Revolution while I was in prison, and Pandit
Jawaharlal has told me something about the Russian
revolution. But it is my conviction that inasmuch as
these struggles were fought with the weapon of violence,

1-2

18

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH!

they failed to realize the democratic ideal. In the
democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy
established by non-violence, there will be equal freedom
for all. Everybody will be his own master.

GandkijVs Correspondence with the Government, — 1942-44 , (Edn.
1945), pp. 173-74

A free democratic India will gladly associate
herself with other free nations for mutual defence
against aggression and for economic co-operation.
She will work for the establishment of a real world
order based on freedom and democracy, utilizing the
world’s knowledge and resources for the progress and
advancement of humanity.

Harijan, 23-9-1939, p. 278

CHAPTER 5

THE GRAZE FOR MACHINERY

‘Are you against all machinery?’

My answer is emphatically, ‘No’. But, I am
against its indiscriminate multiplication. I refuse to
be dazzled by the seeming triumph of machinery.
I am uncompromisingly against all destructive
machinery. But simple tools and instruments and
such machinery as saves individual labour and lightens
the burden of the millions of cottages, I should wel¬
come.

Toung India, 17-6-1926, p. 218

What I object to, is the craze for machinery, not
machinery as such. The craze is for what they call
labour-saving machinery. Men go on ‘saving labour’,
till thousands are without work and thrown on the
open streets to die of starvation. I want to save time

THE CRAZE FOR MACHINERY

19

and labour, not for a fraction of mankind, but for all;
I want the concentration of wealth, not in the hands
of few, but in the hands of all. Today machinery
merely helps a few to ride on the back of millions.
The impetus behind it all is not the philanthropy to
save labour, but greed. It is against this constitution
of things that I am fighting with all my might.

‘Then you are fighting not against machinery as
such, but against its abuses which are so much in
evidence today.5

I would unhesitatingly say ‘yes’; but I would add
that scientific truths and discoveries should first of
all cease to be mere instruments of greed. Then
labourers will not be over-worked and machinery,
instead of becoming a hindrance, will be a help. I am
aiming, not at eradication of all machinery, but limi¬
tation.

‘When logically argued out, that would seem to
imply that all complicated .power-driven machinery
should go.5

It might have to go but I must make one thing
clear. The supreme consideration is man. The
machine should not tend to make atrophied the limbs
of man. For instance, I would make intelligent excep¬
tions. Take the case of the Singer Sewing Machine.
It is one of the few useful things ever invented, and
there is a romance about the device itself. Singer
saw his wife labouring over the tedious process of sew¬
ing and seaming with her own hands, and simply out
of his love for her he devised the Sewing Machine in
order to save her from unnecessary labour. He, how¬
ever, saved not only her labour but also the labour
of everyone who could purchase a sewing machine.

20

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

eBut in that case there would have to be a factory
for making these Singer Sewing Machines, and it
would have to contain power-driven machinery of
ordinary type.5

Yes, but I am socialist enough to say that such
factories should be nationalized, or State-controlled.
They ought only to be working under the most attrac¬
tive and ideal conditions, not for profit, but for the
benefit of humanity, love taking the place of greed
as the motive. It is an alteration in the condition
of labour that I want. This mad rush for wealth
must cease, and the labourer must be assured, not only
of a living wage, but a daily task that is not a mere
drudgery. The machine will, under these condi¬
tions, be as much a help to the man working it as
the State, or the man who owns it. The present mad
rush will cease, and the labourer will work (as I have
said) under attractive and ideal conditions. This
is but one of the exceptions I have in mind. The
Sewing Machine had love at its back. The individual
is the one supreme consideration. The saving of
labour of the individual should , be the object, and
honest humanitarian consideration, and not greed,
the motive. Replace greed by love and everything
will come right.

Toung India, 13-11-1924, p. 378

Organization of machinery for the purpose of
concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few
and for the exploitation of many I hold to be alto¬
gether wrong. Much of the organization of machinery
of the present age is of that type. The movement of
the spinning-wheel is an organized attempt to displace
machinery from that state of exclusiveness and ex¬
ploitation and to place it in its proper state. Under

THE CRAZE FOR MACHINERY

21

my scheme, therefore, men in charge of machinery
will think not of themselves or even of the nation to
which they belong, but of the whole human race.

Young India, 17-9-1925, p. 321

Machinery has its place; it has come to stay. But
it must not be allowed to displace necessary human
labour. An improved plough is a good thing. But
if by some chances, one man could plough up by some
mechanical invention of his the whole of the land
of India and control all the agricultural produce and
if the millions had no other occupation, they would
starve, and being idle, they would become dunces,
as many have already become. There is hourly
danger of man being reduced to that unenviable state.

I would welcome every improvement in the
cottage machine, but I know that it is criminal to dis¬
place the hand-labour by power-driven spindles unless
one is at the same time ready to give millions of farmers
some other occupation in their homes.

Young India, 5-11-1925, p. 377

Ours has been described as the machine age because
the machine dominates our economy. Now, what is a
machine? One may ask. In a sense, man is the most
wonderful machine in creation. It can neither be dupli¬
cated nor copied. I have, however, used the word not
in its wider sense, but in the sense of an appliance
that tends to displace human or animal labour instead
of supplementing it or merely increasing its efficiency.

This is the first differential characteristic of the
machine. The second characteristic is that there is no
limit to its growth or evolution. This cannot be said
of human labour. There is a limit beyond which its
capacity or mechanical efficiency cannot go. Out of

22 INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

this circumstance arises the characteristic of the
machine.

It seems to be possessed of a will or genius of its
own. It is antagonistic to man’s labour. Thus it tends
more to displace man, one machine doing the work
of hundred, if not a thousand, who go to swell the
army of the unemployed and the under-employed,
not because it is desirable but because that is its law.
In America it has perhaps reached the extreme limit.

Harijan, 25-8-1946, p. 281

I know that man cannot live without industry.
Therefore, I cannot be opposed to industrialization.
But I have a great concern about introducing machine
industry. The machine produces much too fast, and
brings with it a sort of economic system which I can¬
not grasp. I do not want to accept something when
I see its evil effects which outweigh whatever good it
brings with it. I want the dumb millions of our land
to be healthy and happy and I want them to grow
spiritually. As yet for this purpose we do not need
the machine. There are many, too many idle hands.
But as we grow in understanding, if we feel the need of
machines, we certainly will have them. We want
industry, let us become industrious. Let us become
more self-dependent, then we will not follow the other
people’s lead so much. We shall introduce machines
if and when we need them. Once we shall have
shaped our life on Ahimsa, we shall know how to control
the machine.

Towards New Horizons , (1959), pp. 45-46

I hold that the machinery method is harmful when
the same thing can be done easily by millions of hands
not otherwise occupied. It is any day better and
safer for the millions, spread in the seven hundred

THE CRAZE FOR MACHINERY

23

thousand villages of India scattered over an area nine¬
teen hundred miles long and fifteen hundred broad,
that they manufacture their clothing in their own
villages even as they prepare their own food. These
villages cannot retain the freedom they have enjoyed
from time immemorial, if they do not control the pro¬
duction of prime necessaries of life. Western obser¬
vers hastily argue from Western conditions that what
may be true of them must be true of India where
conditions are different in so many material respects.
Application of the laws of economics must vary with
varying conditions.

The machinery method is no doubt easy. But
it is not necessarily a blessing on that account. The
descent to a certain place is easy but dangerous. The
method of the hand is a blessing, in the present case
at any rate, because it is hard. If the craze for the
machinery method continues, it is highly likely that a
time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and
weak that we shall begin to curse ourselves for having
forgotten the use of the living machines given to us
by God. Millions cannot keep fit by games and ath¬
letics. And why should they exchange the useful,
productive, hardy occupations for the useless, un¬
productive and expensive games and exercises? They
are all right today for a change and recreation. They
will jar upon us when they become a necessary occu¬
pation in order that we may have the appetite for
eating the food in the production of which we had no
hand or part.

When India becomes self-supporting, self-reliant
and proof against temptations and exploitation, she
will cease to be the object of greedy attraction for any
power in the West or the East, and will then feel secure

24

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

without having to carry the^ burden of expensive
armament. Her internal economy will be India’s
strongest bulwark against aggression.

Young India , 2-7-1931, p. 161

Dead machinery must not be pitted against the
millions of living machines represented by the villagers
scattered in the seven hundred thousand villages of
India. Machinery to be well used has to help and
ease human effort. The present use of machinery
tends more and more to concentrate wealth in the
hands of a few in total disregard of millions of men
and women whose bread is snatched by it out of their
mouths. The movement represented by the A.I.SA.
and the A.I.V.I.A. has been conceived so as to minimize
the evil wrought by the craze for amassing large for¬
tunes through the use of dead tools in order to avoid
having to deal with very sensitive human tools.

Harijan, 14-9-1935, p. 244

I am not fighting machinery as such, but the
madness cf thinking that machinery saves labour. Men
‘save’ labour until thousands of them are without work
and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure
employment and livelihood not only to part of the
human race, but for all. I will not have the enrich¬
ment of a few at the expense of the community. At
present, the machine is helping a small minority to
live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive
force of this minority is not humanity and love of their
kind, but greed and avarice. This state of things I
am attacking with all my might.

Lead Kindly Light , by Vincent Sheen, Chap. IV, p. 65 at p. 171

CHAPTER 6

WARNINGS FROM HISTORY

Of course, industrialism is like a force of nature,
but it is given to man to control nature and to con¬
quer her forces. His dignity demands from him
resolution in the face of overwhelming odds. Our
daily life is such a conquest. . . .

What is industrialism but a control of the majority
by a small minority? There is nothing attractive
about it nor is there anything inevitable in it. If the
majority simply wills to say, ‘No’ to the blandishments
of the minority, the latter is powerless for mischief.

It is good to have faith in human nature. I live
because I have that faith. But that faith does not
blind me to the fact of history that, whilst in the
ultimate all is well, individuals and groups called
nations have before now perished. Rome, Greece,
Babylon, Egypt and many others are a standing testi¬
mony in proof of the fact that nations have perished
before now because of their misdeeds. What may be
hoped for is that Europe on account of her fine and
scientific intellect will realize the obvious and retrace
her steps, and from the demoralizing industrialism
she will find a way out. It will not necessarily be
a return to the old absolute simplicity. But it will
have to be a reorganization in which village life will
predominate, and in which brute and material force
will be subordinated to the spiritual force.

Young India, 6-8-1925, p. 273

European writers are handicapped for want of
experience ancf accurate information. They cannot

25

26

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

guide us beyond a certain measure if they have to
generalize from European examples which cannot be
on all fours with Indian conditions, because in Europe
they have nothing like the conditions of India, not
even excluding Russia. What may be, therefore,
true of Europe is not necessarily true of India. We
know, too, that each nation has its own characteristics
and individuality. India has her own; and if we are
to find out a true solution for her many ills, we shall
have to take all the idiosyncracies of her constitution
into account, and then prescribe a remedy. I claim
that to industrialize India in the same sense as Europe
is to attempt the impossible. India has stood many
a storm. Each has left its own indelible mark it is
true, but she has hitherto dauntlessly maintained
her individuality. India is one of the few nations
of the earth which have witnessed the fall of many
civilizations, herself remaining scatheless. India is
one of the few nations on the earth which have re¬
tained some of their ancient institutions although
they have been overlaid with superstition and error.
But she has hitherto shown an inherent capacity for
purging herself of error and superstition. My faith
in her ability to solve the economic problem that faces
her millions has never been so bright as it is today,
especially after my study of conditions in Bengal.

Toung India , 6-8-1925, p. 273

To make India like England and America is to
find some other races and places of the earth for ex¬
ploitation. So far it appears that the Western nations
have divided all the known races outside Europe for
exploitation and that there are no new worlds to dis¬
cover. What can be the fate of India trying to ape
the West? Indeed the West has had a surfeit of in-

WARNINGS FROM HISTORY

27

dustrialism and exploitation. If they who are suffering
from the disease are unable to find a remedy to
correct evils, how shall we, mere novices, be able to
avoid them?

Toung India , 7-10-1926, p. 348

I would destroy that system today, if I had the
power. I would use the most deadly weapons, if I
believed that they would destroy it. I refrain only
because the use of such weapons would only perpe¬
tuate the system though it may destroy its present
administrators. Those, who seek to destroy men rather
than their manners, adopt the latter and become worse
than those whom they destroy under the mistaken
belief that the manners will die with the men. They
do not know the root of the evil.

Toung India, 17-3-1927, p. 85

As I look at Russia where the apotheosis of in¬
dustrialization has been reached, the life there does
not appeal to me. To use the language of the Bible,
4 ‘What shall it avail a man if he gain the whole world
and lose his soul?” In modern terms, it is beneath
human dignity to lose one’s individuality and become
mere cog in the machine. I want every individual to
become a full-blooded, fully-developed member of
society. The villages must become self-sufficient. I
see no other solution if one has to work in terms of
Ahimsa. Now I have that conviction.

Harijan, 28-1-1939, p. 438

There is a growing body of enlightened opinion
which distrusts this civilization which has insatiable
material ambition at one end and consequent war at
the other. But whether good or bad, why must India
become industrial in the Western sense? The Western
civilization is urban. Small countries like England or

28

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

Italy may afford to urbanize their systems. A big
country like America with a very sparse population
perhaps, cannot do otherwise. But one would think
that a big country, with a teeming population with an
ancient rural tradition which has hitherto answered
its purpose, need not, must not copy the Western
model. What is good for one nation situated in one
condition is not necessarily good enough for another
differently situated. One man’s food is often another
man’s poison. Physical geography of a country has
a predominant share in determining its culture. A fur
coat may be a necessity for the dweller in the polar
regions, it will smother those living in the equitorial
regions.

Young India, 25-7-1929, p. 244

CHAPTER 7

IF INDIA BECOMES INDUSTRIALIZED

Industrialization is, I am afraid, going to be a
curse for mankind. Exploitation of one nation by
another cannot go on for all time. Industrialism
depends entirely on your capacity to exploit, on fore¬
ign markets being open to you, and on the absence of
competitors. . . . India, when it begins to exploit
other nations — as it must if it becomes industrialized
— will be a curse for other nations, a menace to the
world. And why should I think of industrializing
India to exploit other nations? Don’t you see the
tragedy of the situation, viz. that we can find work for
our 300 million unemployed, but England can find
none for its three million and is faced with a problem
that baffles the greatest intellects of England? The

IF INDIA BECOMES INDUSTRIALIZED

29

future of industrialism is dark. England has got
successful competitors in America, France, Japan, and
Germany. It has competitors in the handful of mills
in India, and as there has been an awakening in
India, even so there will be an awakening in South
Africa-with its vastly richer resources — natural, mineral
and human. The mighty English look quite pigmies
before the mighty races of Africa. They are noble sava¬
ges after all, you will say. They are certainly noble, but
no savages; and in the course of a few years the Western
nations may cease to find -in Africa a dumping ground
for their wares. And if the future of industrialism is
dark for the West, would it not be darker still for India?

Toung India , 12-11-1931, p. 355

‘You would not industrialize India?5

I would indeed, in my sense of the term. The
village communities should be revived. Indian
villages produced and supplied to the Indian towns
and cities all their wants. India became impoverished
when our cities became foreign markets and began to
drain the villages dry by dumping cheap and shoddy
goods from foreign lands.

‘You would then go back to the natural economy ? 5

Yes. Otherwise I should go back to the city. I
am quite capable of running a big enterprise, but I
deliberately sacrificed the ambition, not as a sacrifice,
but because my heart rebelled against it. For I should
have no share in the spoliation of the nation which is
going on from day to day. But I am industrializing
the village in a different way.

Harijan , 27-2-1937, p. 18

I do not believe that industrialization is necessary
in any case for any country. It is much less so for
India. Indeed, I believe that Independent India

30

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

can only discharge her duty towards a groaning
world by adopting a simple but ennobled life by
developing her thousands of cottages and living at
peace with the world. High thinking is inconsistent
with complicated material life based on high speed
imposed on us by Mammon worship. All the graces
of life are possible only when we learn the art of
living nobly.

There may be sensation in living dangerously.
We must draw the distinction between living in the
face of danger and living dangerously. A man who
dares to live alone in a forest infested by wild beasts
and wilder men without a gun and with God as his
only help, lives in the face of danger. A man who
lives perpetually in mid-air and dives to the earth
below to the admiration of a gaping world lives
dangerously. One is a purposeful, the other a pur¬
poseless life.

Whether such plain living is possible for an iso¬
lated nation, however large geographically and numeri¬
cally, in the face of a world armed to the teeth and in
the midst of pomp and circumstance is a question
open to the doubt of a sceptic. The answer is straight
and simple. If plain life is worth living, then the at¬
tempt is worth making even though only an individual
or a group makes the effort.

At the same time I believe that some key industries
are necessary. I do not believe in arm-chair or armed
socialism. I believe in action according to my belief,
without waiting for wholesale conversion. Hence,
without having to enumerate key industries, I would
have State ownership, where a large number of people
have to work together. The ownership of the products
of their labour, whether skilled or unskilled, will vest

IF INDIA BECOMES INDUSTRIALIZED

31

in them through the State. But as I can conceive
such a State only based on non-violence, I would not
dispossess moneyed men by force but would invite
their co-operation in the process of conversion to State
ownership. There are no pariahs of society, whether
they are millionaires or paupers. The two are sores
of the same disease. And all are men “for a5 that”.

And I avow this belief in the face of the inhumani¬
ties we have witnessed and may still have to witness
in India as elsewhere. Let us live in the face of
danger.

Harijan, 1-9-1946, p. 285

A factory employs a few hundreds and renders
thousands unemployed. I may produce tons of oil
from an oil mill, but I also drive thousands of oilmen
out of employment. I call this destrucitve energy,
whereas production by the labour of millions of hands
is constructive and conducive to the common good.
Mass production through power-driven machinery,
even when State-owned, will be of no avail.

But why not, it is asked, save the labour of mil¬
lions, and give them more leisure for intellectual
pursuits? Leisure is good and necessary up to a
point only. God created man to eat his bread in the
sweat of his brow, and I dread the prospect of our
being able to produce all that we want, including
our foodstuffs, out of a conjurer’s hat.

Harijan , 16-5-1936, p. Ill

God forbid that India should ever take to indus¬
trialism after the manner of the West. The economic
imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England)
is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire
nation of 300 millions took to similar economic

32

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

exploitation, it would strip the world bare like
locusts.

Young India , 20-12-1928, p. 422

Industrialization on a mass scale will necessarily
lead to passive or active exploitation of the villagers
as the problems of competition and marketing come in.
Therefore, we have to concentrate on the village
being self-contained, manufacturing mainly for use.
Provided this character of the village industry is
maintained, there would be no objection to villagers
using even the modern machines and tools that they
can make and can afford to use. Only they should
not be used as a means of exploitation of others.

Harijan , 29-8-1936, p. 226

Pandit Nehru wants industrialization, because
he thinks that if it is socialized, it would be free from
the evils of capitalism. My own view is that the evils
are inherent in industrialism, and no amount of sociali¬
zation can eradicate them.

Harijan , 29-9-1940, p. 299

I have the conviction within me that when all
these achievements of the machine age will have dis¬
appeared, these our handicrafts will remain; when all
exploitations will have ceased, service and honest
labour will remain. It is because this faith sustains
me that I am going on with my work. . . . Indomi¬
table faith in their work sustained men like Stephen¬
son and Columbus. Faith in my work sustains me.

Harijan , 30-11-1935, p. 329

CHAPTER 8

OUR CRIMINAL NEGLECT OF OUR VILLAGES

[From a summary of Gandhiji’s address at a public gathering
at Indore.]

The reason why our average life-rate is deplora¬
bly low, the reason why we are getting more and
more impoverished is that we have neglected our
7,00,000 villages. We have indeed thought of them,
but only to the extent of exploiting them. We read
thrilling accounts of the cglory that was Ind’, and of
the land that was flowing with milk and honey; but
today it is a land of starving millions. We are sitting
In this fine pandal under a blaze of electric lights,
but we do not know that we are burning these lights
at the expense of the poor. We have no right to
use these lights if we forget that we owe these to them.

There is a difference between the civilization of the
East — the civilization of India— and that of the West.
It is not generally realized wherein the difference lies.
Our geography is different, our history is different,
our ways of living are different. Our continent, though
vast, is a speck of the globe, but it is the most thickly
populated, barring China. Well, now, the economics
and civilization of a country where the pressure of
population on land is greatest are and must be different
from those of a country where the pressure is least.
Sparsely populated, America may have need of mach¬
inery. India may not need it at all. Where there
are millions and millions of units of idle labour, it
is no use thinking of labour-saving devices. If some¬
one devised a machine which saved us the trouble of

33

1-3

34

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

using our hands to eat, eating would cease to be a
pleasure, it would become a torture. The reason of
our poverty is the extinction of our industries and our
consequent unemployment. Some years ago India’s
agricultural population was said to be 70 per cent.
Today it is said to be 90 per cent. It does not mean
that 90 per cent are agriculturists, but that, -instead of
70 per cent who depended on land, 90 per cent are
now driven to depend on land. In other words,
whereas there were industries and crafts enough to
feed the 20 per cent, some time ago, these are no
longer there and the people have thus been thrown
on land. They thus steal their living, not because
they want to, but because there is no more land.

Not that there is not enough land to feed our 35
crores. It is absurd to say that India is over-
populated and that the surplus population must die.
I am sure that if all the land that is available was pro¬
perly utilized and made to yield up to its capacity,
it would surely maintain the whole population. Only
we have got to be industrious and to make two blades
of grass grow where one grows today.

Throw off Your Inertia

The remedy is to identify ourselves with the poor
villager and to help him make the land yield its
plenty, help him produce what we need, and confine
ourselves to use what he produces, live as he lives,
and persuade him to take to more rational ways of
diet and living.

We eat mill-ground flour, and even the poor vil¬
lager walks with a head-load of half a maund grain
to have it ground in the nearest flour mill. Do you
know that in spite of the plenty of foodstuffs we pro¬
duce we import wheat from outside and we eat the

OUR CRIMINAL NEGLECT OF OUR VILLAGES 35

‘superfine’ flour from Australia? We will not use
our hand-ground flour, and the poor villager also
foolishly copies us. We thus turn our wealth into
waste, nectar into poison. For whole meal is the pro¬
per meal. Mill-ground flour is vitaminless flour, mill-
ground flour kept for days is not only vitaminless,- but
poison. But we will not exert ourselves to produce
flour which we must eat fresh every day, and will pay
for less nutritious things and purchase ill-health -in the
bargain. This is not any abstruse economic truth,
it is a fact which is daily happening before our -eyes.
The same is the case with rice and gur and oil. We
will eat rice, polished of its substance, and eat less
nutritious sugar and pay more for it than more nutri¬
tious gur. We have suffered the village oilman to be dri¬
ven to extinction and we eat adulterated oils. We
idolize the cow, but kill her by slow degrees. We eat
honey and kill the honey-bee, with the result, that
honey is such a rare commodity today that it is only
available to a ‘Mahatma’ like me or to those, who
must have it from the physician as a vehicle for the
drugs he prescribes. If we took the trouble of learn¬
ing scientific and harmless bee-keeping, we should
get it cheaper and our children would get out of it all
the carbohydrates they need. In all our dietetics we
mistake the shadow for the substance,- preferring
bone-white sugar to rich brown gur and pale white
bread to rich brown bran-bread.

We are said to be a nation of daily bathers.
That we are, to be sure, but we are none the better
for it. For we bathe with unclean water, we foul our
tanks and rivers with filth and use that water for drink¬
ing and bath. We lawyers and degree-holders and
doctors will not learn the elementary principles of

36

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH !

sanitation and hygiene. We have not yet devised the
most economical method of disposal of our evacuations
and we turn our open healthy spaces into breeding
grounds of disease.

I implore you to throw off your inertia, to bestir
yourselves to study these elementary facts and live
more rational lives and learn how to turn waste into
wealth. I have told you simple truths which we
would soon realize and act up to if we threw off the
inertia of ages. But we have- shunned body-labour
to the detriment of our brains, and thus rest content
with the irrational ways of diet and living. Let us
pull ourselves together, and resolve to make our bodies
and brains more active.

Harijan, 11-5-193 5, p. 103

I have found that the town-dweller has gene¬
rally exploited the villager, in fact he has lived on the
poor villager’s subsistence. Many a British official
has written about the conditions of the people of
India. No one has, to my knowledge, said that the
Indian villager has enough to keep body and soul
together. On the contrary they have admitted that
the bulk of the population live on the verge of starva¬
tion and ten per cent are semi-starved, and that mil¬
lions have to rest content with a pinch of dirty salt
and chillies and polished rice or parched grain. You
may be sure that if any one of us were to be asked
to live on that diet, we should not expect to survive
it longer than a month or should be afraid of losing
our mental faculties. And yet our villagers go through
that state from day to day.

Harijan , 4-4-1936, pp. 63-64

\

CHAPTER 9

IF THE VILLAGE PERISHES INDIA
WILL PERISH TOO

In reply to a question by Maurice Frydman, viz.,
“What then is the secret of your concentration on the
village ?55 Gandhiji said:

“I have been saying that if untouchability stays,
Hinduism goes; even so I would say that if the vil¬
lage perishes, India will perish too. It will be no ^more
India. Her own mission in the world will get lost.
The revival of the village is possible only when it -is
no more exploited. Industrialization on a mass- scale
will necessarily lead to passive or active exploitation
of the villagers as the problems of competition and
marketing come in. Therefore, we have to concen¬
trate on the village being self-contained, manufac¬
turing mainly for use. Provided this character of the
village industry is maintained, there would be no
objection to villagers using- even the modern ma¬
chines and tools that they can make apd can afford
to use. Only they should not be used as a means of
exploitation of others.55

“I have been trying to understand your village
industries movement,55 said Mr. Frydman, “for the
last two years, but I have learnt today in a few minutes
what I had not learnt during these two years. . . .
You are more radical than Socialists. They are
against the worker being exploited; you are not only
against this, but also against the worker exploiting
others.55

(G But comforts' may be necessary even for
man’s spiritual advancement. One could not- advance

37

38

INDUSTRIALIZE — -AND PERISH!

himself by identifying himself with the discomfort
and squalor of the villager.

A. A certain degree of physical harmony and
comfort is necessary, but above a certain level, it be¬
comes a hindrance instead of help. Therefore, the
ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and
satisfying them seems to be a delusion and a snare.
The satisfaction of one’s physical needs, even the
intellectual needs of one’s narrow self, must meet at
a certain point a dead stop, before it degenerates
into physical and intellectual voluptuousness. A
man must arrange his physical and cultural circum¬
stances so that they do not hinder him in his service
of humanity, on which all his energies should be con¬
centrated.

Harijan, 29-8-1936, pp. 225-2,6

The more I penetrate the villages, the greater
is the shock delivered as I perceive the blank stare
in the eyes of the villagers I meet. Having nothing
else to do but to work as labourers side by side with
their bullocks, they have become almost like them.
It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions
have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature is
revenging herself upon us with terrible effect for this
criminal waste of the gift she has bestowed upon us
human beings. We refuse to make full use of the
gift. And it is the exquisite mechanism of the hands
that among a few other things separates us from the
beast. Millions of us use them merely as feet. The
result is that she starves both the body and the mind.

The spinning wheel alone, can stop this reckless
waste. It can do that now and without any extra¬
ordinary outlay of money or intelligence. Owing
to this waste, we are living in a state almost of sus-

IF THE VILLAGE PERISHES INDIA WILL PERISH TOO 39

pended animation. It can be revived if only every
home is again turned into a spinning mill and every
village into a weaving mill. With it will at once revive
the ancient rustic art and the rustic song. A semi-
starved nation can have neither religion nor art nor
organization.

Young India, 17-2-1927, p. 52

The moment you talk to them [the Indian pea¬
sants] and they begin to speak, you will find wisdom
drops from their lips. Behind the crude exterior you
will find a deep reservoir of spirituality. I call this
culture — you will not find such a thing in the West.
You try to engage a European peasant in conversation
and you will find that he is uninterested in things
spiritual.

Harijan , 28-1-1939, p. 4*39

In the case of the Indian villager, an age-old
culture is hidden under an encrustment of crudeness.
Take away the encrustation, remove his chronic
poverty and his illiteracy and you have the finest
specimen of what a cultured, cultivated, free citizen
should be.

Harijan, 28-1-1939, p. 439

Any country that exposes itself to unlimited
foreign competition can be reduced to starvation
and therefore, subjection if the foreigners desire it.
This is known as peaceful penetration. One has to
go only a step further to understand that the result
would be the same as between hand-made goods
and those made by power-driven machinery. We
are seeing the process going on before our eyes. Little
flour mills are ousting the chakki , oil mills the village
ghani , rice mills the village dhenki , sugar mills the vil¬
lage gur- pans, etc. This displacement of village labour

40

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

is -impoverishing the villagers and enriching the
moneyed men. If the process continues sufficiently
long, the villagers will be destroyed without any
further effort. No Chengis Khan could devise a more
ingenious or more profitable method of destroying
these villages. And the tragedy of it all is that the vil¬
lagers are unconsciously but none the less surely con¬
tributing to their own destruction. To complete the
tale of their woe, let the reader know that even culti¬
vation has ceased to be profitable. For some crops*
the villager does not cover even the cost of seed.

Harijan , 20-6-1936, p. 145

It is only when the cities realize the duty of
making an adequate return to the villages for the
strength and sustenance which they derive from them,
instead of selfishly exploiting them, that a healthy
and moral relationship between the two will spring
up. And if the city children are to play their part in
this great and noble work of social reconstruction,
the vocations through which they are to receive their
education ought to be directly related -to the require¬
ments of the villages.

Harijan , 9-10-1937, p. 293

Imagine a nation working only five hours per
day on an average, and this not by choice but by
force of circumstances, and you have a realistic picture
of India.- If the reader would visualize the picture,
he must dismiss from his mind the busv fuss of the
city life or the grinding fatigue of the factory life or
the slavery of the plantation. These are but drops,
in the ocean of Indian humanity. If he would visua¬
lize the picture of the Indian skeleton, he must think
of the eighty per cent of the population which is work¬
ing Its own fields, and which has practically no

IF THE VILLAGE PERISHES INDIA WILL PERISH TOO 4 1

occupation for at least four months in the year, and which
therefore lives on the borderland of starvation. This
is the normal condition. The ever recurring famines
make a large addition to this enforced idleness.

Young India, 3-11-1921, p. 350

I have believed and repeated times without
number that India is to be found not in its few cities
but in its, 7,00,000 villages. But we town-dwellers
have believed that India is to be found in its towns
and the villages were created to minister to our needs.
We have hardly ever paused to inquire if those poor
folk get sufficient to eat and clothe themselves with
and whether they have a roof to shelter themselves
from sun and rain.

Harijan , 4-4-1936, p. 63

What India needs is not the concentration ot
capital in a few hands, but its distribution so as to be
within easy reach of the 1\ lakhs of villages that make
this continent 1900 miles long and 1500 miles broad.

Young India, 23-3-1921, p. 93

I suggest that if India is to evolve along non¬
violent lines, it will have to decentralize many things.
Centralization -cannot be sustained and defended
without adequate force. Simple homes from which
there is nothing to take away require no policing;
the palaces of the rich must have strong guards to
protect them against dacoity. So must huge factories.
Rurally organized India will run less risk of foreign
invasion than urbanized India, well equipped with
military, naval and air forces.

Harijan, 30-12-1939, p. 391

CHAPTER 10

WHY THE VILLAGE INDUSTRIES
MOVEMENT

The idea behind the village industries scheme
is that we should look to the villages for the supply
of our daily needs and that, when we find that some
needs are not so supplied, we should see whether
with a little trouble and organization, they cannot
be profitably supplied by the villagers. In estimating
the profit, we should think of the villager, not of our¬
selves. It may be that, in the initial stages, we might
have to pay a little more than the ordinary price
and get an inferior article in the bargain. Things
will improve, if we will interest ourselves in the sup¬
plier of our needs and insist on his doing better and
take the trouble of helping to do better.

Harijan, 23-11-1934, p. 324

A fair friend, who was enthused over the con¬
templated formation of the All-India Village Indus¬
tries Association, on reading my press message on
preliminary programme, writes:

“The very idea of the revival or encouragement of
the hand-husking of rice and chakki- grinding even for
villages has scared me from, and abated my enthusiasm
for, village work. It seems to me an enormous waste of
one’s time and energy not to take advantage of labour-
saving devices in the uplift scheme. If the villagers, and along
with them the uplift workers, have to husk and grind, there
will hardly be leisure left for them to attend to anything
else for their improvement. Besides, if the primitive methods
were revived, the men will take up the work in the first flush

42

WHY THE VILLAGE INDUSTRIES MOVEMENT

43

of enthusiasm; but ultimately the brunt of the whole work,
I mean husking and grinding, will fall on us, women, and
there will be a setback to the little progress we have already
made.”

Underlying this argument is a fallacy. There
is no question of refusing to take advantage of labour-
saving devices. If the villagers had enough to eat and
to clothe themselves with, there would be no cause
for home-grinding or home-husking, assuming that
the question of health was not of any importance or,
if it was, there was no difference between home-
ground flour and mill-ground, or home-husked rice
and mill-husked. But the problem is that the villagers
became idle when they left off husking and grinding
even for their own use, and made no good use of
their idle hours, whether for uplift or otherwise. A
starving man or woman who has time on his or her
hand will surely be glad to earn an honest anna dur¬
ing that time, for, he or she will resent being ad¬
vised to save his or her labour when either can turn
it into a few pice to alleviate starvation. My cor¬
respondent is wrong in thinking that the uplift work¬
er has either to grind or husk. He has certainly to
learn the art and know the tools, so that he can sug¬
gest improvements and understand the limitations
of the tools. She is wrong, again, in thinking that
in the first flush of enthusiasm men will be called
upon to grind or husk or will perform these tasks of
their own accord and ultimately let the brunt fall on
the shoulders of women. The fact is that husking and
grinding was the prerogative of women, and tens of
thousands made a living out of this task, which was
both dignified and invigorative. Now they are per¬
force idle, because the vast majority of them have not

44

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

been able to find another employment in the place
of these two, which we have snatched away from
them.

When the fair friend writes about the “little
progress” that the women have already made, she
has undoubtedly the city-dwellers in mind, for the
village life is entirely untouched by uplift workers*
The majority of them do not even know how the
women or men live in the 7,00,000 villages of this
vast land. We little know how they have deterio¬
rated for want of nourishing food and protective
clothing. And we little know how, being fed on un-
nutritious rice or flour, which are their staple, they
and their children lose stamina and what little vita¬
lity they have.

I have no partiality for return to the primitive
method of grinding, and husking for the sake of them.

I suggest the return, because there is no other way
of giving employment to the millions of villagers who
are living in idleness. In my opinion, village uplift
is impossible, unless we solve the pressing economic
distress. Therefore, to induce the villagers to utilize
their idle hours is in itself solid uplift work. I invite
the fair correspondent and those who feel like her to
go to some villages, live there for some time in the
midst of the villagers and try to live like them, and
they will soon perceive the soundness of my argument.

Harijan, 30-11-1934, p. 330

“To my unaided mind you appear to be opening the
first campaign of an endless and quixotic war against modern
civilization. Long ago you proclaimed yourself its sleepless
enemy, and now you would, if you could, turn it back on
the course it has pursued for some millennia. I reel at the
mere thought.”

WHY THE VILLAGE INDUSTRIES MOVEMENT 45

This is from an intimate letter from a dear friend
who wrote in reply to my letter, inquiring if he could
extend his co-operation in the effort. As the view ex¬
pressed so frankly by the friend is, I know, shared by
quite a number of friends, it is well for me to explain
my position. It would be impertinent for me to do so,
if my position was not also that of the A.I.V.I.A.

In seeking to revive such village industries as are
capable of being revived, I am making no such at¬
tempt as the friend ascribes to me. I am trying to do
what every lover of village life, everyone who realizes
the tragic meaning of the disintegration of villages
is doing or trying to do. Why am I turning back the
course of modern civilization, when I ask the villager
to grind his own meal, eat it whole, including the
nourishing bran, or when I ask him to turn sugarcane
into gud for his own requirements, if not for sale ? Am
I turning back the course of modern civilization,
when I ask the villagers not merely to grow raw pro¬
duce, but to turn it into marketable products and
thereby add a few more pies to their daily income?

And surely modern civilization is not millennia
old. We can almost give its birth an exact date. If I
could do it, I would most assuredly destroy or radi¬
cally change much that goes under the name of mo¬
dern civilization. But that is an old story of life. The
attempt is undoubtedly there. Its success depends
upon God. But the attempt to revive and encourage
the remunerative village industries is not part of such
an attempt, except in so far as every one of my acti¬
vities, including the propagation of non-violence, can
be described as such an attempt. The revival of
village industries is but an extension of the Khadi

46

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

effort. Hand-spun cloth, hand-made paper, hand-
pounded rice, home-made bread and jam, are not
uncommon in the West. Only there they do not have
one-hundredth of the importance they have in India.
For, with us, their revival means life, their destruc¬
tion means death, to the villagers, as he who runs
may see. Whatever the machine age may do, it will
never give employment to the millions whom the
wholesale introduction of power machinery must
displace.

Harijan, 4-1-1935, p. 372

Key Industries

Qj Do you think that cottage industries and
big industries can be harmonized?

A. Yes, if they are planned so as to help the vil¬
lages. Key industries, industries which the nation
needs, may be centralized. But then I would not
choose anything as a ‘Key industry’ that can be taken
up by the villages with a little organizing. For ins¬
tance, I did not know the possibilities of hand-made
paper. Now I am so hopeful that I believe that every
village can produce its own paper, though not for
newspapers, etc. Supposing the State controlled paper¬
making and centralized it, I would expect it to pro¬
tect all the paper that villages can make.

Q,. What is meant by protecting the villages?

A. Protecting them against the inroads of the
cities. At one time cities were dependent on the vil¬
lages. Now, it is the reverse. There is no interdepen¬
dence. Villages are being exploited and drained by
the cities.

Q,. Don’t the villages need a lot of things that
the cities produce?

WHY THE VILLAGE INDUSTRIES MOVEMENT 47

A . I wonder. In any case, under my scheme,
nothing will be allowed to be produced by cities
which can be equally well produced by the villages.
The proper function of cities is to serve as clearing
houses for village products.

Harijan , 28-1-1939, p. 438

A friend asked me whether I proposed to replace
the railways with country carts, and if I did not, how
I expected to replace mills with wheels. I told him
that I did not propose to replace railways with carts
because I could not do so even if I wished. Three
hundred million carts could not destroy distance. But
I could replace mills with wheels. For railways solved
the question of speed. With mills it was a question of
production in which the wheel could easily compete
if there were enough hands to work as there were in
India. I told him that as a matter of fact a villager
could manufacture for himself sufficient cloth cheap¬
er than mills if he did not .count the value of his
labour. And he did not need to do so as he would
spin or even weave during his spare hours. It is
remarkable how false or incomplete analogies deceive
people.

Another argument advanced was that the spin¬
ning wheel was a waste of effort. It was an astounding
argument advanced without any thought given to it.
I showed that anything done with a purpose could
not be regarded as waste of effort. The spinning
wheel was presented to the nation for giving occupa¬
tion to the millions who had, at least for four months
in the year, nothing to do. I told the objector too that,
seeing that the wheel produced at least 100 yards
of yarn per every half hour, it could not be regarded

48

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

as waste of effort. Moreover, it not only was not a
waste of effort, but a sound economic proposition.
For, what was required for the millions was a uni¬
versal productive occupation which could be taken
up during odd moments and which did not require
any special talent or long course of training to learn.
Such an occupation was only hand-spinning and no
other.

Young India, 2i8-5-1925, p. 186

CHAPTER 11

MASS PRODUCTION v. PRODUCTION
BY THE MASSES

(By Pyarelal)

“Revival of village industries and handicrafts
is all right,” remarked a young friend the other day,
with the air of one making a big concession to the
earnestness of his adversary’s conviction rather than
its correctness. “It will beautify life which our poor
villagers badly need. But I very much doubt, sir,
whether our ‘expanding universe’, as Mr. Jeans has
put it, can do without mass production. No, sir, in
‘mass production’ coupled with mass control lies the
only hope of the toiling millions. What has Gan-
dhiji to offer in its place?”

The poser put me in mind of a conversation on
the question of machinery that Gandhiji had with
an American press correspondent in London during
the Second Round Table Conference. “Production
by the Masses”, I replied, repeating an expression
that Gandhiji had used on that occasion.

MASS PRODUCTION V. PRODUCTION BY THE MASSES 49

About a year prior to the meeting, the American
friend in question had met Mr. Ford in America,
and, in the course of his talk, with him, had among
other things mentioned to him his view that the current
European conditions were opposed to the continuance
of mass production. Mr. Ford had replied that those
conditions were bound to pass away in a short time
and that a demand for cheaper things would soon
spring up. “It is a question of raising the standard
of living of the people,” had concluded Mr. Ford.

“Do you feel, Gandhiji,” asked the friend, “that
mass production will raise the standard of living of the
people?”

“I do not believe in it at all,” replied Gandhiji.
“There is a tremendous fallacy behind Mr. Ford’s
reasoning. Without simultaneous distribution on an
equally mass scale, the production can result only
in a great world tragedy. Take Mr. Ford’s cars.
The saturation point is bound to be reached soon or
late. Beyond that point the production of cars cannot
be pushed. What will happen then?

“Mass production takes no note of the real re¬
quirement of the consumer. If mass production were
in itself a virtue, it should be capable of indefinite
multiplication. But it can be definitely shown that
mass production carries within it its own limitations.
If all countries adopted the system of mass production,
there would not be a big enough market for their
products. Mass production must then come to a
stop.”

The Problem of Distribution

“I wonder,” proceeded the interlocutor, “whe¬
ther you feel that this saturation point has already

1-4

50

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

arrived in the Western world. Mr. Ford says that
there never can be too many articles of quality, that
the needs of the world are constantly increasing and
that, therefore, while there might be saturation in the
market for a given commodity, the general satura¬
tion would never be reached.”

Without entering upon an elaborate argument,
replied Gandhiji:

“I would categorically state my conviction that
the mania for mass production is responsible for the,
world crisis. Granting for the moment that machi¬
nery may supply all the needs of humanity, still, it
would concentrate production in particular areas,
so that you would have to go in a round-about way
to regulate distribution, whereas, if there is produc¬
tion and distribution both in the respective areas
where things are required, it is automatically regu¬
lated, and there is less chance for fraud, none for
speculation.”

The American friend mentioned Mr. Ford’s
favourite plan of decentralization of industry by the
use of electric power conveyed on wires to the re¬
motest corner, instead of coal and steam, as a pos¬
sible remedy, and drew up the picture of hundreds
and thousands of small, neat, smokeless villages, dot¬
ted with factories, run by village communities. “As¬
suming all that to be possible,” he finally asked Gan¬
dhiji, “how far will it meet your objection?” “My
objection won’t be met by that,” replied Gandhiji,
“because while it is true that you will be producing
things in innumerable areas, the power will come
from one selected centre. That, in the end, I think,
would be found to be disastrous. It would place such

MASS PRODUCTION V. PRODUCTION BY THE MASSES 51

a limitless power in one human agency that I dread
to think of it. The consequence, for instance, of such
a control of power would be that I would be depen¬
dent on that power for light, water, even air, and so
on. That, I think, would be terrible.55

When Masses Wake Up

The friend was struck by the argument.

Mi. Gandhi, he remarked, “this is a particularly
appropriate moment, it seems to me, for you to be
visiting London, because, apart from the political
questions, it seems to me to be a time when the Wes¬
tern world is disillusioned in regard to machinery
in general, in regard to the mass production system
we have built up in Germany and America in parti¬
cular, and people are feeling somewhat bewildered
and doubtful as to their value and asking themselves
whether we have not, after all, overdone it. Have you
any idea as to what Europe and America should do to
solve the problem presented by too much machinery?55

“You see,55 answered Gandhiji, “that these na¬
tions are able to exploit the so-called weaker or un¬
organized races of the world. Once those races gain
this elementary knowledge and decide that they are
no more going to be exploited, they will simply be
satisfied with what they can provide themselves.
Mass production, then, at least where the vital neces¬
sities are concerned, will disappear.55

“As a world organization?55

“Yes.55

“But even these races will require more and
more goods as their needs multiply.55

52

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

“They will then produce for themselves. And
when that happens, mass production, in the techni¬
cal sense in which it is understood in the West, ceases.”

“You mean to say it becomes local?”

“When production and consumption both be¬
come localized, the temptation to speed up produc¬
tion, indefinitely and at any price, disappears. All
the endless difficulties and problems that our present-
day economic system presents, too, would then come to
an end. Take a concrete instance. England today is
the cloth shop of the world. It, therefore, needs to
hold a world in bondage to secure its market. But
under the change that I have envisaged, she would
limit her production to the actual needs of her 45 mil¬
lion of population. When that need is satisfied, the
production would necessarily stop. It won’t be conti¬
nued for the sake of bringing in more gold irrespective
of the needs of a people and at -the risk of their im¬
poverishment. There would be no unnatural accu¬
mulation of hoards in the pockets of the few, and want
in the midst of plenty in regard to the rest, as is
happening today, for instance, in America. America
is today able to hold the world in fee by selling all
kinds of trinkets, or by selling her unrivalled skill, *
which she has a right to do. She has reached the acme
of mass production, and yet she has not been able to
abolish unemployment or want. There are still thou¬
sands, perhaps millions of people in America who
live in misery, in spite of the phenomenal riches of the
few. The whole of the American nation is not bene¬
fited by this mass production.”

Mass Production v. Production by Masses

“The fault lies in distribution,” observed the
journalist friend. “It means that, whilst our system

MASS PRODUCTION V. PRODUCTION BY THE MASSES 53

of production has reached a high pitch of perfection,
the distribution is still defective. If distribution could
be equalized, would not mass production be steri¬
lized of its evils?55

“No,55 replied Gandhiji, “the evil is inherent in
the system. Distribution can be equalized when
production is localized; in other words, when the
distribution is simultaneous with production. Distri¬
bution will never be equal so long as you want to tap
other markets of the world to dispose of your goods.
That does not mean that the world has no use for
the marvellous advances in science and organization
that the Western nations have made. It only means
that the Western nations have to use their skill. If
they want to use their skill abroad, from philanthropic
motives, America would say, ‘Well, we know
how to make bridges, we won’t keep it a secret, but
we say to the whole world, we will teach you how to
make bridges and will charge you nothing.5 Ame¬
rica says, ‘Where other nations can grow one blade
of wheat, we can grow two thousand.5 Then, America
should teach that art free of charge to those who
will learn it, but not aspire to grow wheat for the
whole world, which would spell a sorry day for the
world indeed.55

The American friend next asked Gandhiji, refer¬
ring to Russia, whether it was not a country that had
developed mass production without exploiting, in
Gandhiji’s sense, the less industrialized nations, or
without falling into the pit of unequal distribution.
“In other words,55 replied Gandhiji, “you want me to
express opinion of State-controlled industry, i.e., an
economic order in which both production and

54

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

distribution are controlled and regulated by the
State as is being today done in Soviet Russia. Well,
it is a new experiment. How far it will ultimately
succeed, I do not know. If it were not based on force,
I would dote on it. But today since it is based on force,
I do not know how far and where it will take us.”

Mass Production Minus Force

“Then, you do not envisage mass production as
an ideal future of India,” questioned the American
friend.

“Oh yes, mass production, certainly,” replied
Gandhiji, “but not based on force.. After all, the mes¬
sage of the spinning wheel is that. It is mass produc¬
tion, but mass production in people’s own homes. If
you multiply individual production to millions of
times, would it not give you mass production on a
tremendous scale? But I quite understand that your
£mass production’ is a technical term for production
by the fewest possible number through the aid of
highly complicated machinery. I have said to myself
that that is wrong. My machinery must be of the
most elementary type which I can put in the homes
of the millions. Under my system, again, it is labour
which is the current coin, not metal. Any person who
can use his labour has that coin, has wealth. He con¬
verts his labour into cloth, he converts his labour
into grain. If he wants paraffin oil, which he cannot
himself produce, he uses his surplus grain for getting
the oil. It is exchange of labour on free, fair and equal
terms — hence it is no robbery. You may object that
this is a reversion to the primitive system of barter.
But is not all international trade based on the barter
system ?

MASS PRODUCTION V. PRODUCTION BY THE MASSES 55

“Look, again, at another advantage that this
system affords. You can multiply it to any extent.
But concentration of production ad infinitum can only
lead to unemployment. You may say that workers
thrown out of work by the introduction of improved
machinery will find occupations in other jobs. But
in an organized country, where there are only fixed
and limited avenues of employment, where the worker
has become highly skilled in the use of one particular
kind of machinery, you know from your own expe¬
rience that this is hardly possible. Are there not over
three millions unemployed in England today? A
question was put to me only the other day: ‘What
are we doing with these three million unemployed?5
They cannot shift from factory to field in a day. It
is a tremendous problem.55

Machinery and Agriculture

This brought the discussion to the employment
of machinery in agriculture.

“Would not machine agriculture make a great
difference to India, as it has to America and
Canada?55 asked the American friend.

“Probably,55 replied Gandhiji. “But that is a
question I do not consider myself fit to answer. We
in India have not been able to use complicated
machinery in agriculture with profit so far. We do
not exclude machinery. We are making cautious
experiments. But we have not found power-driven
agricultural machinery to be necessary.55

The American friend, in common with the rest,
had come imbued with the belief that Gandhiji was a
sworn enemy of all machinery. “Some people have

56

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

the impression,” he remarked, “that you are oppos¬
ed to machinery in general. That is not true, I
believe.”

“That is quite wrong,” answered Gandhiji. “The
spinning wheel is also machinery. It is a beautiful
work of art. It typifies the use of machinery on a
universal scale. It is machinery reduced to the terms
of the masses.”

“So you are opposed to machinery, only because
and when it concentrates production and distribution
in the hands of the few,” finally summed up the
American friend.

“You are right. I hate privilege and monopoly.
Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo
to me. That is all,” answered Gandhiji.

Harijan, 2-11-1934, pp. 301-02

CHAPTER 12

HUMANITARIAN INDUSTRIAL POLICY FOR

INDIA

A humanitarian industrial policy for India means
to me a glorified revival of hand-spinning, for through
it alone can pauperism, which is blighting the lives of
millions of human beings in their own cottages in this
land, be immediately removed. Everything else may
thereafter be added, so as to increase the productive
capacity of this country. I would, therefore, have all
young men with a scientific training to utilize their
skill in making the spinning wheel, if it is possible, a
more efficient instrument of production in India’s
cottages. I am not opposed to the progress of science

HUMANITARIAN INDUSTRIAL POLICY FOR INDIA 57

as such. On the contrary the scientific spirit of the
West commands my admiration.

Young India, 17-12-1925, p. 440

Mechanization is good when the hands are too
few for the work intended to be accomplished. It is an
evil when there are more hands than required for the
work, as is the case in India. . . . The problem with
us is not how to find leisure for the teeming millions
inhabiting our villages. The problem is how to utilize
their idle hours, which are equal to the working days
of six months in the year. Strange as it may appear,
every mill generally is a menace to the villagers. I
have not worked out the figures, but I am quite safe
in saying that every mill-hand does the work of at
least ten labourers doing the same work in their villages.
In other words, he earns more than he did in his
village at the expense of ten fellow-villagers. Thus
spinning and weaving mills have deprived the villagers
of a substantial means of livelihood. It is no answer
in reply to say that they turn out cheaper, better cloth,
if they do so at all. For, if they have displaced
thousands of workers, the cheaper mill cloth is dearer
than the dearest Khadi woven in the villages. Goal is
not dear for the coal miner who can use it there and
jthen nor is Khadi dear for the villager who manu¬
factures his own Khadi. But if the cloth manufactured
in mills displaces village hands, rice mills and flour
mills not only displace thousands of poor women
* workers, but damage the health of the whole popu¬
lation in the bargain. Where people have no objection
to taking flesh diet and can afford it, white flour and
polished rice may do no harm, but in India, where
millions can get no flesh diet even where they have
no objection to eating it, if they can get it, it is sinful

58

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

to deprive them of nutritious and vital elements con¬
tained in whole wheat meal and unpolished rice. It is
time medical men and others combined to instruct
the people on the danger attendant upon the use of
white flour and polished rice. . . .

Hence the function of the All-India Village
Industries Association must, in my opinion be to
encourage the existing industries and to revive, where
It is possible and desirable, the dying or dead indus¬
tries of villages according to the village methods, i.e.,
the villagers working in their own cottages as may have
done from times immemorial. These simple methods
can be considerably improved as they have been in
hand-ginning, hand-carding, hand-spinning and hand¬
weaving.

A critic objects that the ancient plan is purely
Individualistic and can never bring about corpo¬
rate effort. This view appears to me to be very super¬
ficial. Though articles may be manufactured by
villagers in their cottages, they can be pooled together
and profits divided. The villagers may work under
supervision and according to plan. The raw material
may be supplied from common stock. If the will to
co-operative effort is created, there is surely ample
opportunity for co-operation, division of labour, saving
of time and efficiency of work. All these things are
today being done by the All-India Spinners’ Asso¬
ciation in over 5,000 villages.

Harijan , 16-11-4934, p. 316

Our clear duty is ... to investigate the possi¬
bility of keeping in existence the village wheel, the
village crusher and the village pounder, and, by
advertising their products, discovering their qualities.

HUMANITARIAN INDUSTRIAL POLICY FOR INDIA 59

ascertaining the condition of the workers and the
number displaced by the power-driven machinery
and discovering the methods of improving them,
whilst retaining their village character, to enable them
to stand the competition of the mills. How terribly
and criminally we have neglected them! Here there
is no antagonism to the textile or the sugar or the
rice mills. Their products must be preferred to the
corresponding foreign products. If they were in danger
of extinction from foreign competition, they should
receive the needed support. But they stand in no
such need. They are flourishing in spite of foreign
competition. What is needed is protection of the
village crafts and the workers behind them from the
crushing competition of the power-driven machinery,
whether it is worked in India or in foreign lands.

Harijan, 10-8-1934, p. 204

In a nutshell, of the things we use, we should
restrict our purchases to the articles which villages
manufacture. Their manufactures may be crude.
W e must try to induce them to improve their work¬
manship, and not dismiss them because foreign articles
or even articles produced in cities, that is big factories,
are superior. In other words, we should evoke the
artistic talent of the villager. In this manner shall we
repay somewhat the debt we owe to them. We need
not be frightened by the thought whether we shall
ever succeed in such an effort. Within our own
times we can recall instances where we have not been
baffled by the difficulty of our tasks when we have
known that they were essential for the nation’s progress.
If, therefore, we as individuals believe that revivifica¬
tion of India’s villages is a necessity of our existence,
if we believe that thereby only can we root out

60

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

untouchability and feel one with all, no matter to what
community or religion they may belong, we must
mentally go back to the villages and treat them as
our pattern, instead of putting the city life before
them for imitation. If this is the correct attitude,
then, naturally, we begin with ourselves and thus use,
say, hand-made paper instead of mill-made, use village
reed, wherever possible, instead of the fountain pen
or the penholder, ink made in the villages instead of
the big factories, etc. I can multiply instances of
this nature. There is hardly anything of daily use
in the home which the villagers have not made before
and cannot make even now. If we perform the
mental trick and fix our gaze upon them, we immediate¬
ly put millions of rupees into the pockets of the villa¬
gers, whereas at the present moment we are exploit¬
ing the villagers without making any return worth
the name. It is time we arrested the progress of the
tragedy.

Harijan, 30-11-1934, p. 332

In my writing on cent per cent Swadeshi, I have
shown some aspects of it can be tackled immediately
with benefit to the starving millions both economically
and hygienically. The richest in the land can share
in the benefit. Thus if the rice can be pounded in
the villages after the old fashion, the wages will fill the
pockets of the rice-pounding sisters and the rice-eating
millions will get some sustenance from the unpolished
rice instead of pure starch which the polished rice
provides.

Human greed, which takes no heed of the health
or the wealth of the people who come under its heels, ♦
is responsible for the hideous rice-mills one sees in all

HUMANITARIAN INDUSTRIAL POLICY FOR INDIA 61

the rice-producing tracts. If public opinion was
strong, it will make rice-mills an impossibility by
simply insisting on unpolished rice and appealing to
the owners of rice-mills to stop a traffic that undermines
the health of a whole nation and robs the poor of
an honest means of livelihood.

Harijan , 26-10-1934, p. 292

I regard the existence of power wheels for the
grinding of corn in thousands of villages as the limit
of our helplessness. I suppose India does not produce
all the engines or grinding machines. . . . The plant¬
ing of such machinery and engines on a large scale in
villages is also a sign of greed. Is it proper to fill
one’s pockets in this manner at the expense of the
poor? Every such machinery puts thousands of
hand -chakkis out of work and takes away employment
from thousands of housewives and artisans who make
these chakkis . Moreover, the process is infective and
will spread to every village industry. The decay of the
latter spells too the decay of art. If it meant replace¬
ment of old crafts by new ones, one might not have
much to say against it. .But this is not what is happen¬
ing. In the thousands of villages where power machi¬
nery exists, one misses the sweet music in the early
morning of the grinders at work.

Harijan, 10-3-1946, p. 34

CHAPTER 13

THE MACHINE NO ONE CAN OUST

Do I want to put back the hand of the clock of
progress? Do I want to replace the mills by hand¬
spinning and hand-weaving? Do I want to replace
the railway by the country cart? Do I want to
destroy machinery altogether? These questions have
been asked by some journalists and public men. My
answer is : I would not weep over the disappearance
of machinery or consider it a calamity. But I have
no design upon machinery as such. What I want to
do at the present moment is to supplement the produc¬
tion of yarn and cloth through our mills, save the
millions we send out of India, and distribute them in
our cottages.

Young India, 19-1-1921, p. 20

A socialist holding a brief for machinery asked
Gandhiji if the village industries movement was not
meant to oust all machinery.

Ts not this wheel a machine?’ was the counter¬
question that Gandhiji, who was just then spinning,
gave in reply.

T do not mean this machine, but I mean bigger
machinery.’

‘Do you mean Singer’s sewing machine? That
too is protected by the village industries movement,
and for that matter any machinery which does not
deprive masses of men of the opportunity to labour,
but which helps the individual and adds to his effi¬
ciency, and which a man can handle at will without
being its slave.’

62

THE MACHINE NO ONE CAN OUST 63'

cBut what about the great inventions? You
would have nothing to do with electricity?’

‘Who said so ? If we could have electricity in every
village home, I should not mind villagers plying their
implements and tools with the help of electricity. But
then the village communities or the State would own
power houses, just as they have their grazing pastures.
But where there is no electricity and no machinery,
what are idle hands to do ? Will you give them work,
or would you have their owners cut them down for
want of work ?

‘I would prize every invention of science made for
the benefit of all. There is a difference between
invention and invention. I should not care for the
asphyxiating gases capable of killing masses of men
at a time. The heavy machinery for work of public
utility which cannot be undertaken by human labour
has its inevitable place, but all that would be owned
by the State and used entirely for the benefit of the
people. I can have no consideration for machinery
which is meant either to enrich the few at the expense
of the many, or without cause to displace the useful
labour of many.

‘But even you as a socialist would not be in
favour of an indiscriminate use of machinery. Take
printing presses. They will go on. Take surgical
instruments. How can one make them with one’s
hands? Heavy machinery would be needed for
them. But there is no machinery for the cure of
idleness but this,’ said Gandhiji pointing to his spin¬
ning wheel. ‘I can work it whilst I am carrying on
this conversation with you, and am adding a little to the
wealth of the country. This machine no one can oust.’

Harijan , 22-6-1935, p. 146

j

64

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH !

The spinning wheel represents to me the hope of
the masses. The masses lost their freedom such as it
was, with the loss of the Gharkha. The Charkha
supplemented the agriculture of the villagers and gave
it dignity. It was the friend and solace of the widow.
It kept the villagers from idleness. For the Gharkha
included all the anterior and posterior industries—
ginning, carding, warping, sizing, dyeing and weaving.
These in their turn kept the village carpenter and
blacksmith busy. The Gharkha enabled the seven
hundred thousand villages to become self-contained.
With the exit of the Charkha went the other village
industries, such as the oil press. Nothing took place
of these industries. Therefore the villages were, drain¬
ed of their varied occupations and their creative talent
and what little wealth these brought them.

The analogy of the other countries in which too
village handicrafts were destroyed will not serve us
because, whereas the villagers there had some com¬
pensating advantages, India’s villagers had practically
none. The industrialized countries of the West were
exploiting other nations. India is herself an exploited
country. Hence, if the villagers are to come into
their own, the most natural thing that suggests itself
is the revival of the Gharkha and all it means.

This revival cannot take place without an army of
selfless Indians of intelligence and patriotism working
with a single mind in the villages to spread the mess¬
age of the Gharkha and bring a ray of hope and light
into their lustreless eyes. This is a mighty effort at
co-operation and adult education of the correct type.
It brings about a silent and sure revolution like the
silent but sure and life-giving revolution of the Gharkha.

Harijan, 13-4-1940, p. 85

THE MACHINE NO ONE CAN OUST

65

I think of the poor of India every time that I
draw a thread on the wheel. For a person suffering
from the pangs of hunger, and desiring nothing but
to fill his belly, his belly is his God. To him anyone
who gives him bread is his master. Through him he
may even see God. To give alms to such persons, who are
sound in all their limbs, is to debase oneself and them.
What they need is some kind of occupation, and the
occupation that will give employment to millions can
only be hand-spinning. But I can instil my faith in
the potency of hand-spinning in the minds of the
toilers of India not by making speeches but only
by spinning myself. Therefore I have described my
spinning as a penance or sacrament. And since I
believe that where there is pure and active love for
the poor there is God also, I see God in every thread
that I draw on the spinning wheel.

Young India , 20-5-1926

I have often said that Khadi is the central sun
round which the other village industries revolve like
so many planets. They have no independent exist¬
ence. Nor will Khadi exist without the other industries.
They are absolutely interdependent. The fact is that
we have to make a choice between India of the villages
that are as ancient as herself and India of the cities
which are a creation of foreign domination. Today
the cities dominate and drain the villages so that
they are crumbling to ruin. My Khadi mentality tells
me that cities must subserve villages when that
domination goes. Exploiting of villages is itself organi¬
zed violence. If we want Swaraj to be built on non¬
violence, we will have to give the villages their proper
place. This we will never do unless we revive village
industries by using the products thereof in place of

1-5

66

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

things produced in city factories, foreign or indigenous.
Perhaps it is now clear why I identify Khadi with
non-violence. Khadi is the chief village handicraft.
Kill Khadi and you must kill the villages and with
them non-violence. I cannot prove this by statistics.
The proof is before our eyes.

Harijan, 20-1-1940, p. 423

CHAPTER 14

A SACRED LAW OF OUR BEING

A man’s first duty is to his neighbour. This
does not imply hatred for the foreigner or partiality
for the fellow-countryman. Our capacity for service
has obvious limits. We can serve even our neighbour
with some difficulty. If everyone of us duly performed
his duty to his neighbour, no one in the world who
needed assistance would be left unattended. Therefore
one who serves his neighbour serves all the world.
As a matter of fact there is in Swadeshi no room for
distinction between one’s own and other people. To
serve one’s neighbour is to serve the world. Indeed
it is the only way open to us of serving the world.
One to whom the whole world is as his family should
have the power of serving the universe without moving
from his place. He can exercise this power only
through service rendered to his neighbour. Tolstoy
goes further and says that at present we are riding
on other people’s backs; it is enough only if we get
down. This is another way of putting the same
thing. No one can serve others without serving
himself. And whoever tries to achieve his private ends
without serving others harms himself as well as the

A SACRED LAW OF OUR BEING

67

world at large. The reason is obvious. All living
beings are members one of another so that a person’s
every act has a beneficial or harmful influence on the
whole world. We cannot see this, near-sighted as
we are. The influence of a single act of an indivi¬
dual on the world may be negligible. But that in¬
fluence is there all the same and an awareness of this
truth should make us realize our responsibility.

Swadeshi therefore does not involve any disservice
to the foreigner. Still Swadeshi does not reach
everywhere, for that is impossible in the very nature
of things. In trying to serve the world, one does not
serve the world and fails to serve even the neighbour.
In serving the neighbour one in effect serves the world.
Only he who has performed his duty to his neighbour has
the right to say, eAll are akin to me’. But if a person
says, ‘All are akin to me,’ and neglecting his neigh¬
bour gives himself up to self-indulgence, he lives to
himself alone.

We find some good men who leave their own place
and move all over the world serving non-neighbours.
They do nothing wrong, and their activity is not an
exception to the law of Swadeshi. Only their capa¬
city for service is greater. To one man only he who
lives next door to him is his neighbour. For a second
man his neighbourhood is co-extensive with his village
and for a third with ten surrounding villages. Thus
everyone serves according to his capacity. A common
man cannot do uncommon work. Definitions are
framed with an eye to him alone, and imply everything
which is not contrary to their spirit. When he observes
the law of Swadeshi, the ordinary man does not think
that he is doing service to any others. He deals with
the neighbouring producer, as it is convenient for him.

68

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

But an occasion may arise when this is inconvenient.
One who knows that Swadeshi is the law of life will
observe it even on such occasions. Many of us at
present are not satisfied with the quality of goods
made in India, and are tempted to buy foreign goods.
It is, therefore, necessary to point out that Swadeshi
does not simply minister to our convenience but is a
rule of life. Swadeshi has nothing to do with hatred
of the foreigner. It can never be one’s duty to wish
or do ill to others.

Ashram Observances in Action (,Edn. 1959), pp. 67-70

The vow of Swadeshi is a necessary vow. ... I
suggest to you we are departing from one of the sacred
laws of our being when we leave our neighbour and
go out somewhere else in order to satisfy our wants.
If a man comes from Bombay here and offers you
wares, you are not justified in supporting the Bombay
merchant or trader so long as you have got a mer¬
chant at your very door, born and bred in Madras.
That is my view of Swadeshi. In your village barber,
you are bound to support him to the exclusion of the
finished barber who may come to you from Madras.
If you find it necessary that your village barber should
reach the attainments of the barber from Madras,
you may train him to that. Send him to Madras by
all means, if you wish, in order that he may learn his
calling. Until you do that, you are not justified in
going to another barber. That is Swadeshi. So,
when we find that there are many things that we can¬
not get in India, we must try to do without them. We
may have to do without many things which we may
consider necessary; but believe me, when you have
that frame of mind, you will find a great burden taken
off your shoulders, even as the Pilgrim did in that

A SACRED LAW OF OUR BEING

*

69

inimitable book, Pilgrim's Progress. There came a
time when the mighty burden that the Pilgrim was
carrying on his shoulders unconsciously dropped from
him, and he felt a freer man than he was when he
started on the journey. So will you feel freer men
than you are now immediately you adopt this Swadeshi
life.

Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi , Natesan, (4th edn.),
pp. 385-86

If we follow the Swadeshi doctrine, it would be
your duty and mine to find out neighbours who can
supply our wants and to teach them to supply them
where they do not know how to proceed, assuming
that there are neighbours who are in want of healthy
occupation. Then every village of India will almost
be a self-supporting and self-contained unit, exchang¬
ing only such necessary commodities with other villages
as are not locally producible. This may all sound
nonsensical. Well, India is a country of nonsense.
It is nonsensical to parch one’s throat with thirst when
a kindly Mohammedan is ready to offer pure water to
drink. And yet thousands of Hindus would rather
die of thirst than drink water from a Mohammedan
household. These nonsensical men can also, once
they are convinced that their religion demands
that they should wear garments manufactured in India
only and eat food only grown in India, decline to
wear any other clothing or eat any other food.

Supposing that every one followed this mode of
life, we should have at once an ideal state. All will
not reach that state at the same time. But those of
us who, realizing its truth, enforce it in practice, will
clearly anticipate and accelerate the coming of that
happy day. Under this plan of life, in seeming to

70

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

f

serve India to the exclusion of every other country, I
do not harm any other country. My patriotism is
both exclusive and inclusive. It is exclusive in the
sense that in all humility I confine my attention to the
land of my birth, but is inclusive in the sense that
my service is not of a competitive or antagonistic
nature. Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas is not merely
a legal maxim, but it is a grand doctrine of life. It is
the key to a proper practice of Ahimsa or love.

Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Natesan, (4th edn.),
pp. 341-44

CHAPTER 15

RURAL DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

Independence must begin at the bottom. Thus,
every village will be a republic or Panchayat having full
powers. It follows, therefore, that every village has to
be self-sustained and capable of managing its affairs
even to the extent of defending itself against the whole
world. It will be trained and prepared to perish in
the attempt to defend itself against any onslaught from
without. Thus, ultimately, it is the individual who is
the unit. This does not exclude dependence on and
willing help from neighbours or from the world. It
will be free and voluntary play of mutual forces. Such
a society is necessarily highly cultured in which every
man and woman knows what he or she wants and,
what is more, knows that no one should want anything
that others cannot have with equal labour.

This society must naturally be based on truth
and non-violence which, in my opinion, are not possible
without a living belief in God meaning a self-existent,

RURAL DEMOCRACY IN ACTION 7 1

all-knowing Living Force which inheres every other
force known to the world, and which depends on none
and which will live when all other forces may con¬
ceivably perish or cease to act. I am unable to ac¬
count for my life without belief in this all-embracing
Living Light.

In this structure composed of innumerable villages,
there will be ever-widening, never-ascending circles.
Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by
the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose
centre will be the individual always ready to perish
for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle
of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life com¬
posed of individuals, never aggressive in their arro¬
gance but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the
oceanic circle of which they are integral units.

Therefore, the outermost circumference will not
wield power to crush the inner circle but will give
strength to all within and derive its own strength from
it. I may be taunted with the retort that this is all
Utopian and, therefore, not worth a single thought.
If Euclid’s point, though incapable of being drawn by
human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture
has its own for mankind to live. Let India live for
this true picture, though never realizable in its com¬
pleteness. We must have a proper picture of what we
want, before we can have something approaching it.
If there ever is to be a republic of every village in
India, then I claim verity for my picture in which the
last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is
to be the first and none the last.

In this picture every religion has its full and
equal place. We are all leaves of a majestic tree
whose trunk cannot be shaken off its roots which are

72

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

deep down in the bowels of the earth. The mightiest
wind cannot move it.

In this there is no room for machines that would
displace human labour and that would concentrate
power in a few hands. Labour has its unique place
in a cultured human family. Every machine that
helps every individual has a place. But I must con¬
fess that I have never sat down to think out what that
machine can be. I have thought of Singer’s sewing
machine. But even that is perfunctory. I do not need
it to fill in my picture.

Harijan, 28-7-1946, p. 236

When Panchayatraj is established, public opinion
will do what violence can never do. The present
power of the zamindars, the capitalists and the rajas
can hold sway only so long as the common people do
not realize their own strength. If the people non-
co-operate with the evil of zamindari or capitalism, it
must die of inanition. In Panchayatraj only the
Panchayat will be obeyed and the Panchayat can
only work through the law of their making.

Harijan , 1-6-1947, p. 172

Society based on non-violence can only consist
of groups settled in villages in which voluntary co¬
operation is the condition of dignified and peaceful
existence.

Harjan, 13-1-1940, pp. 410-11

Distinguished travellers from the world came to
India in the days of yore from China and other
countries. They came in quest of knowledge and put
up with great hardships in travelling. They had
reported that in India there was no theft, people were
honest and industrious. They needed no locks for their
doors. In those days there was no multiplicity of

MY IDEAL VILLAGE

73

castes as at present. It is the function of Panchayats
to revive honesty and industry. It is the function of the
Panchayats to teach the villagers to avoid disputes,
if they have to settle them. That would ensure speedy
justice without any expenditure. They would need
neither the police nor the military.

Harijan , 4-1-1948, pp. 499-500

CHAPTER 16

MY IDEAL VILLAGE

An ideal Indian village will be so constructed as
to lend itself to perfect sanitation. It will have cot¬
tages with sufficient light and ventilation, built of a
material obtainable within a radius of five miles of it.
The cottages will have courtyards enabling household¬
ers to plant vegetables for domestic use and to house
their cattle. The village lanes and streets will be free
of all avoidable dust. It will have wells according
to its needs and accessible to all. It will have houses
of worship for all, also a common meeting place, a
village common for grazing its cattle, a co-operative
dairy, primary and secondary schools in which in¬
dustrial education will be the central fact, and it
will have Panchayats for settling disputes. It will
produce its own grains, vegetables and fruit, and its
own Khadi. This is roughly my idea of a model
village. ... I am convinced that the villagers can,
under intelligent guidance, double the village income
as distinguished from individual income. There are
in our villages inexhaustible resources not for com¬
mercial purposes in every case but certainly for local
purposes in almost every case. The greatest tragedy is

74

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH !

the hopeless unwillingness of the villagers to better their
lot.

Harijan , 9-1-1937, p. 383

My ideal village will contain intelligent human
beings. They will not live in dirt and darkness as
animals. Men qnd women will be free and able to
hold their own against anyone in the world. There
will be neither plague, nor cholera, nor smallpox;
no one will be idle, no one will wallow in luxury.
Everyone will have to contribute his quota of manual
labour. ... It is possible to envisage railways, post
and telegraph . . . and the like. . . .

Bunch of Old Letters , (1948), pp. 506-07 (5-10-1945)

The villagers should develop such a high degree of
skill that articles prepared by them should command
a ready market outside. When our villages are fully
•developed there will be no dearth in them of men with
a high degree of skill and artistic talent. There will
be village poets, village artists, village architects,
linguists and research workers. In short, there will
be nothing in life worth having which will not be had
In the villages. Today the villages are dung heaps.
Tomorrow they will be like tiny gardens of Eden
where dwell highly intelligent folk whom no one can
deceive or exploit.

The reconstruction of villages along these lines
should begin now. The reconstruction of the villages
should not be organized on a temporary but per¬
manent basis.

Craft, art, health and education should all be
integrated into one scheme. Nai Talim is a beautiful
blend of all the four and covers the whole education of
the individual from the time of conception to the
moment of death. Therefore, I would not divide

MY IDEAL VILLAGE

75

village uplift work into water-tight compartments
from the very beginning but undertake an activity
which will combine all four. Instead of regarding craft
industry as different from education, I will regard
the former as the medium for the latter. Nai Talim,
therefore, ought to be integrated into the scheme.

Harijan, 10-11-1946, p. 394

A village unit as conceived by me is as strong as
the strongest. My imaginary village consists of 1,000 /
souls. Such a unit can give a good account of itself,
if it is well organized on a basis of self-sufficiency.

Harijan, 4-8-1946, p. 252

Each village has to be self-sustained and capable
of managing its affairs even to the extent of defend¬
ing itself against the whole world.

Harijan, 28-7-1946, p. 236

I know that the work (of shaping the ideal village)
is as difficult as to make of India an ideal country.

. . . But if one can produce one ideal village, he will
have provided a pattern not only for the whole country
but perhaps for the whole world. More than this a
seeker may not aspire after.

Towards New Horizons, (1959), p. 99

To model such a village may be the work of a life
time. Any lover of true democracy and village life
can take up a village, treat it as his world and sole
work, and he will find good results. He begins by
being the village scavenger, spinner, watchman,
medicineman and school master all at once. If
nobody comes near him, he will be satisfied with sca¬
venging and spinning.

Harijan, 26-7-1942, p. 238

We have to tackle the triple malady which holds
our villages fast in its grip: (i) want of corporate

76

•INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

sanitation; (ii) deficient diet; (iii) inertia. . . . They
are not interested in their own welfare. They don’t
appreciate modern sanitary methods. They don’t
want to exert themselves beyond scratching their
farms or doing such labour as they are used to. These
difficulties are real and serious. But they must not
baffle us.

Harijan f 16-5-1936, p. 1 1 1

We stand today in danger of forgetting how to
use our hands. To forget how to dig the earth and
tend the soil is to forget ourselves. To think that your
occupation of the Ministerial chair will be vindicated,
if you serve the cities only, would be to forget that
India really resides in her 7,00,000 village units.
What would it profit a man if he gained the world
but lost his soul into the bargain?

Harijan , 25-8-1946, p. 282

The government of the village will be conducted
by the Panchayat of five persons, annually elected by
the adult villagers, male and female, possessing mini¬
mum prescribed qualifications.

Harijan, 26-7-1942, p. 238

Since there will be no system of punishments in
the accepted sense, this Panchayat will be legislature,
judiciary and executive combined to operate for its
year of office.

Harijan, 26-7-1942, p. 238

Every Panchayat of five adult men or women
being villagers or village-minded shall form a unit.

Two such contiguous Panchayats shall form a
working party under a leader elected from among
themselves.

When there are one hundred such Panchayats,
the fifty first grade leaders shall elect from among

MY IDEAL VILLAGE

77

themselves a second grade leader and so on, the
first grade leaders meanwhile working under the second
grade leader. Parallel groups of two hundred Pan-
chayats shall continue to be formed till they cover
the whole of India, each succeeding group ofPanchayats
electing second grade leader after the manner of the
first. All second grade leaders shall serve jointly for
the whole of India and severally for their respective
areas. The second grade leaders may elect, whenever
they deem necessary, from among themselves a chief
who will, during pleasure, regulate and command all
the groups.

Towards New Horizons , (1959), p. 194

Non-violence with its technique of Satyagraha
and non-co-operation will be the sanction of the
village community.

Harijan, 26-7-1942, p. 238

My idea of self-sufficiency is that villages must be
self-sufficient in regard to food, cloth and other basic
necessities. But even this can be overdone. There¬
fore you must grasp my idea properly. Self-suffi¬
ciency does not mean narrowness. To be self-sufficient
is not to be altogether self-contained. In no circum¬
stances would we be able to produce all the things we
need. So though our aim is complete self-sufficiency,
we shall have to get from outside the village what we
cannot produce in the village; we shall have to produce
more of what we can in order thereby to obtain in
exchange what we are unable to produce.

Khadi — Why and How , (1959), p. 166

Villages will be swept away, if they are not self-
sufficient as to their primary wants and self-reliant as
to their protection against internal disruption by dis¬
sensions and disease and external danger from thieves

78

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

and dacoits. Self-sufficiency, therefore, means all the
cotton processes and growing of seasonal food crops
and fodder for cattle. Unless this is done there will be
starvation. And self-reliance means corporate orga¬
nization ensuring adjustment of internal differences
through arbitration by the wise men of villages and
cleanliness by corporate attention to sanitation and
common diseases. No mere individual effort is going,
to suffice. And above all, villagers must be taught to
feel their own strength by combined effort to make
their villages proof against thieves and dacoits. This
is best done by corporate non-violence. But if the way
to non-violence does not seem clear to workers, they
will not hesitate to organize corporate defence through
violence.

Harijan, 5-4-1942, p. 107

There will be neither paupers nor beggars, nor
high nor low, neither millionaire employers nor half-
starved employees, nor intoxicating drinks or drugs.
There will be the same respect for women as vouch¬
safed to men and the chastity and purity of men and
women will be jealously guarded. Where every woman
except one’s wife, will be treated by men of all reli¬
gions, as mother, sister or daughter according to her
age. Where there will be no untouchability and where
there will be equal respect for all faiths. They will
be all proudly, joyously and voluntarily bread labou¬
rers. I hope everyone who listens to me or reads these
lines will forgive me if stretched on my bed and bask¬
ing in the sun, inhaling life-giving sunshine, I allow
myself to indulge in this ecstasy.

Harijan, 18-1-1948, p. 526

CHAPTER 17

ECONOMIC v. MORAL PROGRESS

[From a lecture delivered by Gandhiji at a meeting of the
Muir Central College Economic Society, held at Allahabad on
22nd December, 1916.]

Does economic progress clash with real pro- .
gress? By economic progress, I take it, we mean mate¬
rial advancement without limit, and by real progress
we mean moral progress, which again is the same
thing as progress of the permanent element in us.
The subject may, therefore, be stated thus: Does not
moral progress increase in the same proportion as
material progress? I know that this is a wider pro¬
position than the one before us. But I venture to think
that we always mean the large one even when we lay
down the smaller. For we know enough of science to
realize that there is no such thing as perfect rest or
repose in this visible universe of ours. :If, therefore,
material progress does not clash with moral progress,
it must necessarily advance the latter. Nor can we
be satisfied with the clumsy way in which sometimes
those who cannot defend the large proposition put
their case. They seem to be obsessed with the concrete
case of thirty millions of India, stated by the late Sir
William Wilson Hunter to be living on one meal a day.
They say that, before we can think or talk of
their moral welfare, we must satisfy their daily wants.
With these, they say, material progress spells moral
progress. And then is taken a sudden jump; what is
true of thirty millions is true of the universe. They
forget that hard cases make bad law. I need hardly

79

80

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

say to you how ludicrously absurd this deduction
would be. No one has ever suggested that grinding
pauperism can lead to anything else than moral de¬
gradation. Every human being has a right to live and
therefore to- find the wherewithal to feed himself and
where necessary to clothe and house himself. But for
this very simple performance we need no assistance
from economists or their laws.

‘Take no thought for the morrow’ is an injunc¬
tion which finds an echo in almost all the religious
scriptures of the world. In a well-ordered society the
securing of one’s livelihood should be and is found to
be the easiest thing in the world. Indeed, the test of
orderliness in a country is not the number of million¬
aires it owns, but the absence of starvation among its
masses. The only statement that has to be examined
is, whether it can be laid down as a law of universal
application that material advancement means moral
progress.

Now let us take a few illustrations. Rome suffer¬
ed a moral fall when it attained high material afflu¬
ence. So did Egypt and so perhaps most countries of
which we have any historical record. The descendants
and kinsmen of the royal 'and divine Krishna
too fell when they were rolling in riches. We do not
deny to the Rockefellers and Carnegies possession of
an ordinary measure of morality but we gladly judge
them indulgently. I mean that we do not even expect
them to satisfy the highest standard of morality.
With them material gain has not necessarily meant
moral gain. In South Africa, where I had the privi¬
lege of associating with thousands of our countrymen
on most intimate terms, I observed almost invariably
that the greater the possession of riches, the greater

ECONOMIC V. MORAL PROGRESS 81

was their moral turpitude. Our rich men, to say the
least, did not advance the moral struggle of passive
resistance as did the poor. The rich men’s sense of
self-respect was not so much injured as that of the
poorest.

If I were not afraid of treading on dangerous
ground, I would even come nearer home and show
how that possession of riches has been a hindrance to
real growth. I venture to think that the scriptures of
the world are far safer and sounder treatises on the
laws of economics than many of the modern text¬
books. The question we are asking ourselves . . .
is not a new one. It was addressed of Jesus two
thousand years ago. St. Mark has vividly described
the scene. Jesus is in his solemn mood. He is earnest.
He talks of eternity. He knows the world about him.
He is himself the greatest economist of his time. He
succeeded in economizing time and space — he trans¬
cended them. It is to him at his best that one comes
running, kneels down, and asks: “Good Master, what
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” And
Jesus said unto him: ‘Why callest thou me good?
There is none good but one, that is God. Thou know-
est the commandments. Do not commit adultery.
Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness.
Defraud not, Honour thy Father and Mother.’ And
he answered and said unto him: ‘Master, all these
have I observed from my youth.’ Then Jesus be¬
holding him loved him and said unto him: ‘One
thing thou lackest. Go thy way, sell whatever thou
hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have trea¬
sure in heaven — come, take up the cross and follow
me.’ And he was sad at that saying and went away
grieved — for he had great possession. And Jesus

1-6

82

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

looked round about and said unto the disciples :
‘How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of God.5 And the disciples were asto¬
nished at his words. But Jesus answereth again and
said unto them: ‘Children, how hard is it for them
that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter into the kindgom of
God ! 5 Here you have an eternal rule of life stated
in the noblest words the English language is capable
of producing. But the disciples nodded unbelief as
we do even to this day. To him they said as we say
today: “But look how the law fails in practice. If
we sell all and have nothing, we shall have nothing
to eat. We must have money or we cannot even be
reasonably moral.” So they state their case thus:
“And they were astonished out of measure, saying
among themselves: ‘Who then can be saved.5 And
Jesus looking upon them said: ‘With men it is im¬
possible, but not with God, for with God, all things
are possible.5 Then Peter began to say unto him:
‘Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.5 And
Jesus answered and said: ‘Verily I say unto you, there
is no man that has left house or brethren or sisters,
or father or mother, or wife or children or lands for
my sake and Gospel’s but he shall receive one hun¬
dredfold, now in this time houses and brethren and
sisters and mothers and children and land, and in the
world to come, eternal life. But many that are first
shall be last and the last, first. 5 5 5 You have here the
result or reward, if you prefer the term, of following
the law.

I have not taken the trouble of copying similar
passages from the other non-Hindu scriptures and I

ECONOMIC V. MORAL PROGRESS

83

will not insult you by quoting, in support of the law
stated by Jesus, passages from the writings and say¬
ings of our own sages, passages even stronger, if pos¬
sible, than the Biblical extracts I have drawn your
attention to. Perhaps the strongest of all the testi¬
monies in favour of the affirmative answer to the ques¬
tion before us are the lives of the greatest teachers
of the world. Jesus, Mahomed, Buddha, Nanak,
Kabir, Ghaitanya, Shankara, Dayanand, Rama-
krishna were men who exercised an immense influ¬
ence over, and moulded the character of, thousands
of men. The world is the richer for their having lived
in it. And they were all men who deliberately em¬
braced poverty as their lot.

I should not have laboured my point as I have
done, if I did not believe that, in so far as we have
made the modern materialistic craze our goal, so far
are we going down-hill in the path of progress. I hold
that economic progress in the sense I have put it is
antagonistic to real progress. Hence the ancient ideal
has been the limitation of activities promoting
wealth. This does not put an end to all material
ambition. We should still have, as we have always
had, in our midst people who make the pursuit of
wealth their aim in life. But we have always recog¬
nized that it is a fall from the ideal. It is a beautiful
thing to know that the wealthiest among us have
often felt that to have remained voluntarily poor would
have been a higher state for them. ... We need
not be afraid of ideals or of reducing them to practice
even to the uttermost. Ours will only then be a truly
spiritual nation when we shall show more truth than
gold, greater fearlessness than pomp of power and
wealth, greater charity than love of self. If we will

84

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

but cleanse our houses, our palaces and temples of the
attributes of wealth and show in them the attributes
of morality, we can offer battle to any combinations
of hostile forces without having to carry the burden of
a heavy militia. Let us seek first the Kingdom of God
and His righteousness, and the irrevocable promise
is that everything will be added unto us. These are
real economics. May you and I treasure them and
enforce them in our daily life.

Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi , Natesan, pp. 349-55

CHAPTER 18

THE RICH AND THE POOR

I suggest that we are thieves in a way. If I take
anything that I do not need for my own immediate
use and keep it, I thieve it from somebody else. . . .
It is the fundamental law of Nature, without excep¬
tion, that Nature produces enough for our wants from
day to day; and if only everybody took enough for
himself and nothing more, there would be no pau¬
perism in this world, there would be no man dying
of starvation in this world. ... I am no socialist,
and I do not want to dispossess those who have got
possessions; but I do say that personally those of us
who want to see light out of darkness have to follow
this rule. I do not want to dispossess anybody; I
should then be departing from the rule of Ahimsa.
If somebody else possesses more than I do, let him.
But so far as my own life has to be regulated ... I
dare not possess anything which I do not want. In
India we have got many millions of people who have
to be satisfied with one meal a day, and that meal

THE RICH AND THE POOR

85

consisting of a chapati containing no fat in it and a pinch
of salt. You and I have no right to anything that
we really have until these many millions are cloth¬
ed and fed. You and I, who ought to know better,
must adjust our wants, and even undergo voluntary
starvation in order that they may be nursed, fed, and
clothed.

Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi , Natesan, pp. 384-85

Our ignorance or negligence of the Divine Law,
which gives to man from day to day his daily bread
and no more, has given rise to inequalities with all
the miseries attendant upon them. The rich have a
superfluous store of things which they do not need,
and which are, therefore, neglected and wasted; while
millions are starved to death for want of sustenance.
If each retained possession only of what he needed,
no one would be in want, and all would live in con¬
tentment. As it is, the rich are discontented no less
than the poor. The poor man would fain become
a millionaire, and the millionaire a multi-million¬
aire. . . . The poor are often not satisfied when they
get just enough to fill their stomachs; but they are
clearly entitled to it and society should make it a
point to see that they get it. The rich should take the
initiative in the dispossession with a view to a uni¬
versal diffusion of the spirit of contentment. If only
they keep their own property within moderate limits,
the starving will be easily fed, and will learn the lesson
of contentment along with the rich.

From Teravda Mandir , (1935), Chap. VI

The golden rule to apply ... is resolutely to
refuse to have what millions cannot. This ability to
refuse will not descend upon us all of a sudden. The
first thing is to cultivate the mental attitude that

86

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

will not have possessions or facilities denied to millions,
and the next immediate thing is to rearrange our
lives as far as possible in accordance with that
mentality.

Toung India , 24-6-1926, p. 226

The rich should ponder well as to what is their
duty today. They who employ mercenaries to guard
their wealth may find those very guardians turning
on them. The moneyed classes have got to learn
how to fight either with arms or with the weapon of
non-violence. For those who wish to follow the latter
way, the best and most effective mantram is: ^«T
[ (Enjoy thy wealth by renouncing it). Ex¬

panded it means: “Earn your crores by all means.
But understand that your wealth is not yours; it be¬
longs to the people. Take what you require for your
legitimate needs, and use the remainder for society.”
This truth has hitherto not been acted upon; but,
if the moneyed classes do not even act on it in these
times of stress, they will remain the slaves of their
riches and passions and consequently of those who
overpower them.

I see coming the day of the rule of the poor,
whether that rule be through force of arms or of non¬
violence. Let it be remembered that physical force
is transitory even as the body is transitory. But the
power of the spirit is permanent, even as the spirit is
everlasting.

Harijan, 1-2-1942, p. 20

I have no hesitation in endorsing the opinion
that generally rich men and for that matter most
/ men are not particular as to the way they make money.
In the application of the method of non-violence,
one must believe in the possibility of every person,

ECONOMIC EQUALITY 87

however depraved, being reformed under humane
and skilled treatment. We must appeal to the good in
human beings and expect response. Is it not condu¬
cive to the well-being of society that every member
uses all his talents, only not for personal aggrandize¬
ment but for the good of all? We do not want to pro¬
duce a dead equality where every person becomes or
is rendered incapable of using his ability to the utmost
possible extent. Such a society must ultimately perish.
I therefore suggest that my advice that moneyed men
may earn their crores (honestly only, of course) but
so as to dedicate them to the service of all is
perfectly sound. “ is a mantra

based on uncommon knowledge. It is the surest
method to evolve a new order of life of universal bene¬
fit in the place of the present one where each one
lives for himself without regard to what happens to
his neighbour.

Harijan, 22-2-1942, p. 49

CHAPTER 19

ECONOMIC EQUALITY

My idea of society is that while we are born
equal, meaning that we have a right to equal opportu¬
nity, all have not the same capacity. It is, in the na¬
ture of things, impossible. For instance, all cannot
have the same height, or colour or degree of intelli¬
gence, etc.; therefore, in the nature of things, some
will have ability to earn more and others less. People
with talents will have more, and they will utilize their
talents for this purpose. If they utilize their talents
kindly, they will be performing the work of the State.

83 INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

Such people exist as trustees, on no other terms. I
would allow a man of intellect to earn more, I would
not cramp his talent. But the bulk of his greater
earnings must be used for the good of the State, just
as the income of all earning sons of the father go to
the common family fund. They would have their
earnings only as trustees.

Young India, 26-11-1931, p. 363

I want to bring about an equalization of status.
The working classes have all these centuries been
isolated and relegated to a lower status. They have
been shoodras , and the word has been interpreted to
mean an inferior status. I want to allow no differentia¬
tion between the son of a weaver, of an agriculturist
and of a schoolmaster.

Harijan, 15-1-1938, p. 416

Economic equality is the master key to non-vio¬
lent independence. Working for economic equality
means abolishing the eternal conflict between capital
and labour. It means the levelling down of the few
rich in whose hands is concentrated the bulk of the
nation’s wealth on the one hand, and a levelling up of
the semi-starved naked millions on the other. A non¬
violent system of government is clearly an impossi¬
bility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the
hungry millions persists. The contrast between the
palaces of New Delhi and the miserable hovels of the
poor labouring class nearby cannot last one day in a
free India in which the poor will enjoy the same power
as the richest in the land. A violent and bloody revo¬
lution is a certainty one day unless there is a voluntary
abdication of riches and the power that riches give and
sharing them for the common good. I adhere to my
doctrine of trusteeship in spite of the ridicule that has

ECONOMIC EQUALITY

89

been poured upon it. It is true that it is difficult to
reach. So is non-violence. But we made up our minds
in 1920 to negotiate that steep ascent. . . .

It (non-violent Swaraj) will not drop from heaven
all of a sudden one fine morning. But it has to be built
up brick by brick by corporate self-effort. We have
travelled a fair way in that direction. But a much
longer and weary distance has to be covered before
we can behold Swaraj (Sarvodaya) in its glorious
majesty.

Constructive Programme , (1948), pp. 21-22

Since all service here ranks the same and carries
equal wages, hereditary skills are conserved and deve¬
loped from generation to generation instead of being
sacrificed to the lure of personal gain. The principle
of community service replaces unrestricted, soulless
competition. Everybody is a toiler with ample lei¬
sure, opportunity, and facilities for education and cul¬
ture. It is a fascinating world of cottage crafts and
intensive, small-scale farming co-operatives, a world
in which there is no room for communalism or caste.
Finally, it is the world of Swadeshi in which the eco¬
nomic frontiers are drawn closer but the bounds of
individual freedom are enlarged to the maximum
limit; everybody is responsible for his immediate en¬
vironment and all are responsible for society. Rights
and duties are regulated by the principle of inter¬
dependence and reciprocity; there is no conflict
between the part and the whole ; no danger of nationa¬
lism becoming narrow, selfish or aggressive or inter¬
nationalism becoming an abstraction where the con¬
crete is lost in a nebulous haze of vague generalities.

Mahatma Gandhi — The Last Phase , Vol. I, (1956), pp. 539-40

/

90 INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

I have no doubt that if India is to live an exem¬
plary life of independence which would be the envy
of the world, all the bhangis , doctors, lawyers, teachers,
merchants and others would get the same wages for an
honest day’s work. Indian society may never reach
the goal but it is the duty of every Indian to set his
sail towards that goal and no other if India is to be
a happy land.

Harijan , 16-3-1947, p. 67

A votary of Ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utili¬
tarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest
number). He will strive for the greatest good of all
and die in the attempt to realize the ideal. He will,
therefore, be willing to die, so that the others may
live. He will serve himself with the rest, by himself
dying. The greatest good of all inevitably includes
the good of the greatest nunlber, and therefore, he and
the utilitarian will converge in many points in their
career, but there does come a time when they must part
company, and even work in opposite directions. The
utilitarian to be logical will never sacrifice himself.
The absolutist will even sacrifice himself.

Young India, 9-1 2d 926, p. 432

According to me the economic constitution of
India and for the matter of that of the world, should
be such that no one under it should suffer from want
of food and clothing. In other words, everybody
should be able to get sufficient work to enable him to
make the two ends meet. And this ideal can be uni¬
versally utilized only if the means of production of the
elementary necessaries of life remain in the control of
the masses. These should be freely available to all as
God’s air and water are or ought to be; they should
not be made a vehicle of traffic for the exploitation

IS GLASS WAR INEVITABLE?

91

of others. Their monopolization by any country,
nation or group of persons would be unjust. The
neglect of this simple principle is the cause of the desti¬
tution that we witness today not only in this unhappy
land but in other parts of the world too.

Toung India, 15-11-1928, p. 381

CHAPTER 20

IS GLASS WAR INEVITABLE?

I have always said that my ideal is that capital
and labour should supplement and help each other.
They should be a great family living in unity and har¬
mony, capital not only looking to the material wel¬
fare of the labourers, but their moral welfare also — -
capitalists being trustees for the welfare of the labour¬
ing classes under them.

Young India, 20-8-1925, p. 285

I do not fight shy of capital. I fight capitalism.
The West teaches one to avoid concentration of capi¬
tal, to avoid a racial war in another and deadlier
form. Capital and labour need not be antagonistic to
each other. I cannot picture to myself a time when
no man shall be richer than another. But I do picture
to myself a time when the rich will spurn to enrich
themselves at the expense of the poor and the poor
will cease to envy the rich. Even in a most perfect
world, we shall fail to avoid inequalities, but we can
£nd must avoid strife and bitterness.

Young India, 7-10-1926, p. 348

The dream I want to realize is not spoliation of
the property of private owners, but to restrict its en¬
joyment so as to avoid all pauperism, consequent

92

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

discontent and the hideously ugly contrast that exists
today between the lives and surroundings of the rich
and the poor. The latter must be enabled to feel
that they are co-partners with their zamindars and
not their slaves, to be made to labour at the latter’s
sweet will and to be made to pay all kinds of exac¬
tions on all conceivable occasions.

Young India , 21-11-1929, p. 384

The problem is not to set class against class, but
to educate labour to a sense of its dignity. Moneyed
men after all form a microscopic minority in the world.
They will act on the square, immediately labour rea¬
lizes its power and yet acts on the square. To in¬
flame labour against moneyed men is to perpetuate
class hatred and all the evil consequences flowing
from it. The strife is a vicious circle to be avoided at
any cost. It is an admission of weakness, a sign of
inferiority complex. The moment labour recognizes
its own dignity, money will find its rightful place,
i.e. it will be held in trust for labour. For labour is
more than money.

Harijan, 19-10-1945, p. 285

Root Cause of Strikes

Strikes have today become a universal plague.
There are strikes everywhere, America and England
not excepted. But in India, they have a special signi¬
ficance. We are living under an unnatural condition.
As soon as the lid is removed and there is a crevice
letting in the fresh air of freedom, there will be an
increasing number of strikes. The fundamental rea¬
son for this spreading strike fever is that life here as
elsewhere, is today uprooted from its basis, the basis
of religion and what an English writer has called

IS GLASS WAR INEVITABLE?

93

‘cash nexus’ has taken its place. And that is a preca¬
rious bond. But even when the religious basis is there,
there will be strikes, because it is scarcely conceivable
that religion will have become for all the basis of life.
So, there will be attempts at exploitation on the one
hand, and strikes on the other. But these strikes will
then be of a purely non-violent character. Such
strikes never do harm to any one.

Harijan, 22-9-1946, p. 32

In my opinion, employers and employed are
equal partners even if employees are not considered
superior. But what we see today is the reverse. The
reason is that the employers harness intelligence on
their side. They have the superior advantage which
concentration of capital brings with it and they know
how to make use of it. One individual rupee has very
little potency but when money combines as capital,
the combine derives a power different from and far
in excess of the mere sum total of the individual rupees.
A million drops individually are negligible. But
in combination, they make the ocean carrying on its
bosom a fleet of ocean hounds. Whilst capital in
India is fairly organized, labour is still in a more or
less disorganized condition in spite of unions and
their federation. Therefore, it lacks the power that
true combination gives.

Moreover, it lacks intelligence, so much so that
individuals fight against individuals, unions against
unions. Lack of intelligence leads to its exploitation
by selfish and unscrupulous men even to the point
of creating and promoting mischief. They know no
better, being ignorant of the secret of non-violence.
The net result is that the workers suffer. If labour
were to understand the working of non-violence, the

94

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

power generated by combination would any day
exceed the power- of dead metal in the hands of a few
capitalists.

Hence my advice to the employers would be
that they should willingly regard workers as the real
owners of the concerns which they fancy they have
created. They should further regard it as their duty
to equip the employees with sound education that
would draw out the intelligence dormant in them
and gladly promote and welcome the power that
this combination of the workers gives them.

This noble work cannot be done in a day by
the employers. Meanwhile, what should those do who
have to face the destruction wrought by strikers in
their concerns ? I would unhesitatingly advise such
employers that they should at once offer the strikers
full control of the concern which is as much the
strikers’ as theirs. They will vacate their premises
not in a huff but because it is right, and to show their
good-will, they would offer the employees the assis¬
tance of their engineers and other skilled staff. The
employers will find in the end that they will lose no¬
thing. Indeed, their right action will disarm oppo¬
sition and they will earn the blessings of their men.
They will have made proper use of their capital. I
would not consider such action as benevolent. It
would be an intelligent use by the capitalists of their
resources and honest dealing in regard to the emplo¬
yees whom they would have converted into honour¬
able partners.

Harijan, 31-3-1946, p. 60

CHAPTER 21

RIGHTS OR DUTIES?

The true source of rights is duty. If we all dis¬
charge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. If
leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they
escape us like a will-o’-the-wisp. The more we pur¬
sue them, the farther they fly. The same teaching
has been embodied by Krishna in the immortal
words: ‘Action alone is thine. Leave thou the fruit
severely alone.’ Action is duty; fruit is the right.

Young India , 8-1-1925, pp. 15-16

Every man has an equal right to the necessaries
of life even as birds and beasts have. And since every
right carries with it a corresponding duty and the
corresponding remedy for resisting any attack upon
it, it is merely a matter of finding out the correspond¬
ing duties and remedies to vindicate the elementary
fundamental equality. The corresponding duty is to
labour with my limbs and the corresponding remedy
is to non-co-operate with him who deprives me of the
fruit of my labour.

Young India, 26-3-1931, p. 49

If instead of insisting on rights everyone does his
duty, there will immediately be the rule of order esta¬
blished among mankind. There is no such thing as
the divine right of kings to rule and the humble duty
of the ryots to pay respectful obedience to their mas¬
ters. Whilst it is true that these hereditary inequalities
must go as being injurious to the wellbeing of society,
the unabashed assertion of rights of the hitherto down¬
trodden millions is equally injurious, if not more so

95

96 INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

to the same wellbeing. The latter behaviour is pro¬
bably calculated to injure the millions rather than
the few claimants of divine or other rights. They
could but die a brave or cowardly death but those
few dead would not bring in the orderly life of bliss¬
ful contentment. It is, therefore, necessary to under¬
stand the correlation of rights and duties. I venture
to suggest that rights that do not flow directly from
duty well performed are not worth having. They
will be usurpations sooner discarded the better. A
wretched parent who claims obedience from his
children without doing his duty by them excites no¬
thing but contempt. It is distortion of religious pre¬
cept for a dissolute husband to expect compliance in
every respect from his dutiful wife. But the children
who flout their parent who is ever ready to do his duty
towards them would be considered ungrateful and
would harm themselves more than their parent. The
same can be said about husband and wife. If vou
apply this simple and universal rule to employers
and labourers, landlords and tenants, the princes and
their subjects or the Hindus and the Muslims, you will
find that the happiest relations can be established
in all walks of life without creating disturbance in and
dislocation of life and business which you see in India
as in other parts of the world. What I call the law
of Satyagraha is to be deduced from an appreciation
of duties and rights flowing therefrom.

Harijan, 6-7-1947, p. 217

CHAPTER 22

LABOUR SHOULD KNOW ITS STRENGTH

In my humble opinion labour can always vindi¬
cate itself if labour is sufficiently united and self-
sacrificing. No matter how oppressive the capitalists
may be, I am convinced that those who are con¬
nected with labour and guide the labour move¬
ment have themselves no idea of the resources that
labour can command and which capital can never
command. If labour would only understand and
recognize that capital is perfectly helpless without
labour, labour will immediately come to its owfi.

We have unfortunately come under the hypnotic
suggestion and the hypnotic influence of capital, so
that we have come to believe that capital is all in all
on this earth. But a moment’s thought would show
that labour has at its disposal capital which the capi¬
talists will never possess. Ruskin taught in his age
that labour had unrivalled opportunities. But he
spoke above our heads. At the present moment there
is an Englishman, Sir Daniel Hamilton who is really
making that very experiment. He is an economist.
He is a capitalist also, but through his economic re¬
search and experiments he has come to the same
conclusions as Ruskin had arrived at intuitively, and
he has brought to labour a vital message. He says
it is wrong to think that a piece of metal constitutes
capital. He says it is wrong even to think that so
much produce is capital, but he adds that if we go to
the very source, it is labour that is capital, and that
living capital is inexhaustible. It is upon that law

97

1-7

98

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

that we have been working in the Labour Union at
Ahmedabad. It has been that law under which we
have been working in our fight against the Govern¬
ment. It is that law, the recognition of which deli¬
vered 1,700,000 people in Champaran inside six
months from a century-long tyranny. I must not
tarry to tell you what that tyranny was, but those who
are interested in that problem will be able to study
every one of the facts that I have put before them.

Now I will tell you what we have done. There
is in English a very potent word, and you have it in
French also, all the languages of the world have it —
it is “No”, and the secret that we have hit upon is
that when capital wants labour to say “Yes”, labour
roars out “No”, if it means “No”. And immediately
labour comes to recognize that it has got the choice
before it of saying “Yes”, when it wants to say “Yes”
and “No”, when it wants to say “No”, labour is free
of capital and capital has to woo labour. And it
would not matter in the slightest degree that capital
has guns and even poison gas at its disposal. Capital
would still be perfectly helpless if labour would assert
its dignity by making good its “No”. Then labour
does not need to retaliate but labour stands defiant
receiving the bullets and poison gas and still insists
upon its “No”.

The whole reason why labour so often fails is
that instead of sterilizing capital as I have suggested,
labour, (I am speaking as a labourer myself) wants
to seize that capita] and become capitalist itself in the
worst sense of the term. And the capitalist therefore
who is properly entrenched and organized, finding
among the labourers also candidates for the same
office, makes use of a portion of these to suppress

LABOUR SHOULD KNOW ITS STRENGTH

99

labour. If we really were not under this hypnotic
spell, everyone of us, men and women, would recog¬
nize this rock-bottom truth without the slightest’ diffi¬
culty. Having proved it for myself, through a series of
experiments carried on in different departments of
life, I am speaking to you with authority (you will
pardon me for saying so) that when I put this scheme
before you, it was not as something superhuman but
as something within the grasp of every labourer, man
or woman.

Again, you will see that what labour is called
upon to do under this scheme of non-violence is no¬
thing more than the Swiss soldier does under gun-fire
or the ordinary soldier who is armed from top to toe
is called upon to do. While he undoubtedly seeks to
inflict death and destruction upon his adversary, he
also carries his own life in his pocket. I want labour,
then, to copy the courage of the soldier without copy¬
ing the brute in the soldier, namely the ability to in¬
flict death, and I suggest to you that a labourer who
courts death and has the courage to die without even
carrying arms, with no weapons of self-defence, shows
a courage of a much higher degree than a man who
is armed from top to toe.

Young India, 14-1-1932, pp. 17-18

There is conflict of interest between capital and
labour, but we have to resolve it by doing our own
duty. Just as pure blood is proof against poisonous
germs, so will labour, when it is pure, be proof
against exploitation. The labourer has but to rea¬
lize that labour is also capital. As soon as the labour¬
ers are properly educated and organized and they
realize their strength, no amount of capital can sub¬
due them. Organized and enlightened labour can

100

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH !

dictate its own terms. It is no use vowing vengeance
against a party because we are weak. We have to get
strong. Strong hearts, enlightened minds and willing
hands can brave all odds and remove all obstacles.
No, dove thy neighbour as thyself5 is no counsel of
perfection. The capitalist is as much a neighbour
of the labourer as the latter is a neighbour of the
former, and one has to seek and win the willing co¬
operation of the other. Nor does the principle mean
that we should accept exploitation lying down. Our
internal strength will render all exploitation impossible.

Harijan, 1-3-1935, p. 23

CHAPTER 23

LAND TO THE TILLER

If Indian society is to make real progress along
peaceful lines there must be a definite recognition on
the part of the moneyed class that a ryot possesses
the same soul that they do and that their wealth gives
them no superiority over the poor. They must regard
themselves even as the Japanese nobles did, as trustees
holding their wealth for the good of their wards, the
ryots. Then they would take no more than a reason¬
able amount as commission for their labours.

At present there is no proportion between the
wholly unnecessary pomp and ^extravagance of the
moneyed class and the squalid surroundings and the
grinding pauperism of the ryots in whose midst the
former are living. A model Zamindar would at once
therefore reduce much of the burden the ryot is now
bearing. He would come in intimate touch with the

LAND TO THE TILLER

101

ryots and know their wants and inject hope into them
in the place of despair which is killing the very life
out of them. He will not be satisfied with the ryots5
ignorance of the laws of sanitation and hygiene. He
would reduce himself to poverty in order that the ryot
may have the necessaries of life. He will study the
economic condition of the ryots under his care, establish
schools in which he will educate his own children
side by side with those of the ryots. He will purify
the village well and the village tank. He will teach the
ryot to sweep his roads and clean his latrines by himself
doing this necessary labour. He will throw open
without reserve his own gardens for the unrestricted
use of the ryot. He will use as hospital, school, or the
like most of the unnecessary buildings which he keeps
for his pleasure.

If only the capitalist class will read the signs of
the times, revise their notions of God-given right to all
they possess, in an incredibly short space of time the
seven hundred thousand dung-heaps which today pass
muster as villages can be turned into abodes of peace,
health and comfort. I am convinced that the capitalist,
if he follows the Samurai of Japan, has nothing really
to lose and everything to gain. There is no other
choice than between voluntary* surrender on the part
of the capitalist of superfluities and consequent acquisi¬
tion of the real happiness of all on the one hand, and
on the other, the impending chaos into which, if the
capitalist does not wake up betimes, awakened but
ignorant, famishing millions will plunge the country
and which, not even the armed force that a powerful
government can bring into play, can avert. I have
hoped that India will successfully avert the disaster.

Young India , 5-12-1929, p. 396

102

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

Real socialism has been handed down to us by
our ancestors who taught: “All land belongs to Gopal,
where then is the boundary line? Man is the maker
of that line and he can therefore unmake it.” Gopal
literally means shepherd; it also means God. In
modern language it means the State, i.e. the People.
That the land today does not belong to the people is
too true. But the fault is not in the teaching. It is
in us who have not lived up to it.

I have no doubt that we can make as good an
approach to it as is possible for any nation, not ex¬
cluding Russia, and that without violence. The most
effective substitute for violent dispossession is the
wheel with all its implications. Land and all property
is his who will work it. Unfortunately the workers are
or have been kept ignorant of this simple fact.

Harijan, 2-1-1937, p. 375

No man should have more land than he needs for
dignified sustenance. Who can dispute the fact that
the grinding poverty of the masses is due to their having
no land that they can call their own?

But it must be realized that the reform cannot
be rushed, if it is to be brought about by non-violent
means, it can only be done by education both of the
haves and have-nots. ... If the end in view is to be
achieved, the education I have adumbrated has to be
commenced now. An atmosphere of mutual respect
and trust has to be established as the preliminary step.
There can then be no violent conflict between the
classes and the masses.

Young India, 20-4-1940, p. 97

The Kisan or the peasant, whether as a landless
labourer or a labouring proprietor, comes first. He is
the salt of the earth which rightly belongs or should

LAND TO THE TILLER

103

belong to him, not to the absentee landlord or Zamin-
dar. But in the non-violent way the labourer cannot
forcibly eject the absentee landlord. He has so to
work as to make it impossible for the landlord to
exploit him. Closest co-operation amongst the peasants
is absolutely necessary. To this end, special organizing
bodies or committees should be formed where there
are none and those already in existence should be
reformed where necessary. The Kisans are for the
most part illiterate. Both adults and young persons
of school-going age should be educated. This applies
to men and women. Where they are landless labourers
their wages should be brought to a level that would
ensure a decent living which should mean balanced
food, dwelling houses and clothing, which should satisfy
health requirements.

The Bombay Chronicle , 28-10-1944

Co-operative Farming

I firmly believe too that we shall not derive the
full benefits of agriculture until we take to co-operative
farming. Does it not stand to reason that it is far
better for a hundred families in a village to cultivate
their lands collectively and divide the income there¬
from than to divide the land anyhow into a hundred
portions? And what applied to land applied equally
to cattle.

Harijan, 15-2-1942, p. 39

My notion of co-operation is that the land would
be held in co-operation by the owners and tilled and
cultivated also in co-operation. This would cause a
saving of labour, capital, tools, etc. The owners
would work in co-operation and own capital, tools,
animals, seeds etc. in co-operation. Co-operative

104

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

farming of my conception would change the face of the
land and banish poverty and idleness from their midst.
All this is only possible if people become friends of
one another and as one family. When that happy
event takes place there would be no ugly sore in the
form of a communal problem.

Harijan, 9-3-1947, p. 59

CHAPTER 24

THE WEAPON OF 3ATYAGRAHA

Supposing a landowner exploits his tenants and
mulcts them of the fruit of their toil by appropriating
it to his own use. When they expostulate with him he
does not listen and raises objection that he requires so
much for his wife, so much for his children and so on.
The tenants or those who have espoused their cause
and have influence will make an appeal to his wife to
expostulate with her husband. She would probably
say that for herself she does not need his exploited
money. The children will say likewise that they would
earn for themselves what they need.

Supposing further that he listens to nobody or that
his wife and children combine against the tenants, they
will not submit. They will quit if asked to do so but
they will make it clear that the land belongs to him
who tills it. The owner cannot till all the land himself
and he will have to give in to their just demands. It
may, however, be that the tenants are replaced by
others. Agitation short of violence will then continue
till the replacing tenants see their error and make
common cause with the evicted tenants. Thus
Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion,

BREAD LABOUR

105

such that it covers all the elements of society and in the
end makes itself irresistible. Violence interrupts the
process and prolongs the real revolution of the whole
social structure.

The conditions necessary for the .success of Satya-
graha are : (1) The satyagrahi should not have any
hatred in his heart against the opponent; (2) The
issue must be true and substantial; (3) The satyagrahi
must be prepared to suffer till the end for his cause.

Harijan, 31-3-1946, p. 64

This I do say, fearlessly and firmly, that every
worthy object can be achieved by the use of Satya-
graha. It is the highest and infallible means, the
greatest force. Socialism will not be reached by any
other means. Satyagraha can rid society of all evils,
political, economic and moral.

Harijan , 20-7-1947, p. 240

CHAPTER 25

BREAD LABOUR

The law, that to live man must work, first came
home to me upon reading Tolstoy’s writing on Bread
labour. But before that I had begun to pay homage
to it after reading Ruskin’s Unto This Last. The
divine law, that man must earn his bread by labouring
with his own hands, was first stressed by a Russian
writer named T. M. Bondaref. Tolstoy advertised it,
and gave it wider publicity. In my view, the same
principle has been set forth in the third chapter of the
Gita, where we are told, that he who eats without
offering sacrifice eats stolen food. Sacrifice here can
only mean Bread labour.

106

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH1.

Reason too leads us to an identical conclusion.
How can a man, who does not do body labour, have
the right to eat? cIn the sweat of thy brow shalt
thou eat thy bread,5 says the Bible. A millionaire
cannot carry on Jor long, and will soon get tired of his
life, if he rolls in his bed all day long, and is even
helped to his food. He, therefore, induces hunger
by exercise, and helps himself to the food he eats. If
every one, whether rich or poor, has thus to take
exercise in some shape or form, why should it not
assume the form of productive, i.e. Bread labour?
No one asks the cultivator to take breathing exercise
or to work his muscles. And more than nine-tenths
of humanity lives by tilling the soil. How much hap¬
pier, healthier and. more peaceful would the world
become, if the remaining tenth followed the example
of the overwhelming majority, at least to the extent
of labouring enough for their food ! And many
hardships, connected with agriculture, would be easily
redressed, if such people took a hand in it. Again
invidious distinctions of rank would be abolished,
when every one without exception acknowledged the
obligation of Bread labour. It is common to all
the varnas. There is a world-wide conflict between
capital and labour, and the poor envy the rich. If
all worked for their bread, distinctions of rank would
be obliterated; the rich would still be there, but they
would deem themselves only trustees of their property,
and would use it mainly in the public interest.

Bread labour is a veritable blessing to one who
would observe non-violence, worship truth, and
make the observance of brahmacharya a natural act.
This labour can truly be related to agriculture alone.
But at present at any rate, everybody is not in a

BREAD LABOUR

107

position to take to it. A person can, therefore, spin or
weave, or take up carpentry or smithery, instead of
tilling the soil, always regarding agriculture, however,
to be the ideal. Every one must be his own scaven¬
ger. Evacuation is as necessary as eating; and the
best thing would be for ever y one to dispose of his own
waste. If this is impossible, each family should see to
its own scavenging. I have felt for years, that there
must be something radically wrong, where scavenging
has been made the concern of a separate class in society.
We have no historical record of the man, who first
assigned the lowest status in this essential sanitary
service. Whoever he was, he by no means did us a
good. We should, from our very childhood, have the
idea impressed upon our minds that we are all scave¬
ngers, and the easiest way of doing so is, for every one
who has realized this, to commence Bread labour as
a scavenger. Scavenging, thus intelligently taken up,
will help one to a true appreciation of the equality of
man.

From Teravda Mandir. , Chap, ix

If all laboured for their bread and no more, then
there would be enough food and enough leisure for all.
Then there would be no cry of over-population, no
disease, and no such misery as we see around. Such
labour will be the highest form of sacrifice. Men
will no doubt do many other things either through
their bodies or through their minds, but all this will
be labour of love, for the common good. There will
then be no rich and no poor, none high and none
low, no touchable and no untouchable.

This may be an unattainable ideal. But we need
not, therefore, cease to strive for it. Even if without
fulfilling the whole law of sacrifice, that is, the law of

1 08 INDUSTRIALIZE AND PERISH 1

our being, we performed physical labour enough for
our daily bread, we should go a long way towards the
ideal.

If we did so, our wants would be minimized, our
food will be simple. We should then eat to live, not
live to eat. Let anyone who doubts the accuracy of
this proposition try to sweat for his bread, he will
derive the greatest relish from the productions of his
labour, improve his health and discover that many
things he took, were superfluities.

May not men earn their bread by intellectual
labour? No. The needs of the body must be supplied
by the body. “Render unto Caesar that which is
Caesar’s” perhaps applies here well.

Mere mental, that is, intellectual labour is for the
soul and is its own satisfaction. It should never
demand payment. In the ideal state, doctors, lawyers
and the like will work solely for the benefit of society,
not for self. Obedience to the law of Bread labour
will bring about a silent revolution in the structure
of society. Man’s triumph will consist in substituting
the struggle for existence by the struggle for mutual
service. The law of the brute will be replaced by the
law of man.

Return to the villages means a definite voluntary
recognition of the duty of Bread labour and all it
connotes. But says the critic, “Millions of India’s
children are today living in the villages and yet they
are living a life of semi-starvation.” This, alas, is
but too true. Fortunately we know that theirs is not
voluntary obedience. They would perhaps shirk
body labour if they could, and even rush to the nearest
city if they could be accommodated in it. Compul -
sory obedience to a master is a state of slavery, willing

TRUSTEESHIP THE ONLY SAFE SOLUTION 109

obedience to one’s father is the glory of sonship.
Similarly compulsory obedience to the law of Bread
labour breeds poverty, disease and discontent. It is a
state of slavery. Willing obedience to it must bring
contentment and health. And it is health which is
real wealth, not pieces of silver and gold. The Village
Industries Association is an experiment in willing
Bread labour.

Harijan, 29-6-1935, p. 156

CHAPTER 26

TRUSTEESHIP THE ONLY SAFE SOLUTION

Suppose I have come by a fair amount of wealth
either by way of legacy, or by means of trade and
industry, I must know that all that wealth does not
belong to me, what belongs to me is the right to an
honourable livelihood, no better than that enjoyed by
millions of others. The rest of my wealth belongs to
the community and must be used for the welfare of
the community. I enunciated this theory when the
socialist theory was placed before the country in respect
to the possession held by zamindars and ruling chiefs.
They would do away with these privileged classes. I
want them to out-grow their greed and sense of posses¬
sion, and to come down in spite of their wealth to the
level of those who earn their bread by labour. The
labourer has to realize that the wealthy man is less
owner of his wealth than the labourer is owner of his
own, viz. the power to work.

The question how many can be real trustees ac¬
cording to this definition is beside the point. If the
theory is true, it is immaterial whether many live up to

110

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH!

it or only one man lives up to it. The question is of
conviction, if you accept the principle of Ahimsa, you
have to strive to live up to it, no matter whether you
succeed or fail. There is nothing in this theory which
can be said to be beyond the grasp of intellect, though
you may say it is difficult of practice.

Harijan, 3-6-1939, p. 145

Practical Trusteeship Formula

(By Pyarelal)

On our release from prison, we took up the
question where we had left it in the Aga Khan Palace
Detention Camp. Kishorlalbhai and Naraharibhai
joined in drawing up a simple, practical trusteeship
formula. It was placed before Bapu who made a few
changes in it. The final draft read as follows:

1. Trusteeship provides a means of trans¬
forming the present capitalist order of society into
an egalitarian one. It gives no quarter to capita¬
lism, but gives the present owning class a chance
of reforming itself. It is based on the faith that
human nature is never beyond redemption.

2. It does not recognize any right of private
ownership of property except so far as it may be
permitted by society for its own welfare.

3. It does not exclude legislative regulation of
the ownership and use of wealth.

4. Thus under State-regulated trusteeship,,
an individual will not be free to hold or use his ^
wealth for selfish satisfaction or in disregard of
the interests of society.

5. Just as it is proposed to fix a decent mini¬
mum living wage, even so a limit should be fixed
for the maximum income that would be allowed

A GALL TO YOUTH

111

to any person in society. The difference between
such minimum and maximum incomes should be
reasonable and equitable and variable from time
to time so much so that the tendency would be
towards obliteration of the difference.

6. Under the Gandhian economic order the
character of production will be determined by
social necessity and not by personal whim or
greed.

Harijan, 25-10 1952, p. 301

CHAPTER 27

A GALL TO YOUTH

The village work frightens us. We who are town-
bred find it trying to take to the village life. Our
bodies in many cases do not respond to the hard life.
But it is a difficulty which we have to face boldly,
even heroically, if our desire is to establish Swaraj
for the people, not substitute one class rule by another,
which may be even worse. Hitherto the villagers have
died in their thousands so that we might live. Novy
we might have to die so that they may live. The
difference will be fundamental. The former have
died unknowingly and involuntarily. Their enforced
sacrifice had degraded us. If now we die knowingly
and willingly, our sacrifice will ennoble us and the
whole nation. Let us not flinch from the necessary
sacrifice, if we will live as an independent self-respecting
nation.

Young India , 17-4-1924, p. 130

112

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

The cities are capable of taking care of themselves.
It is the village we have to turn to. We have to dis¬
abuse them of their prejudices, their superstitions,
their narrow outlook and we can do so in no other
manner than that of staying amongst them, and sharing
their joys and sorrows and spreading education and
intelligent information amongst them.

Young India, 30-4-1931, p. 94

I ask you (young men) to go to the villages and
bury yourselves there, not as their masters or bene¬
factors but as their humble servants. Let them know
what to do and how to change their modes of living
from your daily conduct and way of living. Only feel¬
ing will be of no use, just like steam which by itself is
of no account unless it is kept under proper control
when it becomes a mighty force. I ask you to go
forth as messengers of God carrying balm for the
wounded soul of India.

Young India, 29-12-1927, p. 443

We are inheriters of a rural civilization. The
vastness of our country, the vastness of the population,
the situation and the climate of the country have, in
my opinion, destined it for a rural civilization. Its
defects are well known, but not one of them is irre¬
mediable. To uproot it and substitute for it an urban
civilization seems to me an impossibility, unless we
are prepared by some drastic means to reduce the popu¬
lation from three hundred million to three or say
even thirty. I can, therefore, suggest remedies on the
assumption that we must perpetuate the present rural
civilization and endeavour to rid it of its acknowledged
defects. This can only be done if the youth of the
country will settle down to village life. And if they
will do this, they must reconstruct their life and pass

A GALL TO YOUTH

113

every day of their vacation in the villages surrounding
their colleges or high schools, and those who have
finished their education or are not receiving any
should think of settling down in villages.

Young India , 7-11-1929, p. 364

We have got to be ideal villagers, not the villagers
with their queer ideals about sanitation and giving
no thought to how they eat and what they eat. Let
us not, like most of them, cook anyhow, eat anyhow,
live anyhow. Let us show them the ideal diet. Let
us not go by mere likes and dislikes, but get at the
root of those likes and dislikes.

Harijan , 1-3-1935, p. 21

We must identify ourselves with the villagers
who toil under the hot sun beating on their bent
backs and see how we would like to drink water
from the pool in which the villagers bathe, wash their
clothes and pots and in which their cattle drink and
roll. Then and not till then shall we truly represent
the masses and they will, as surely as I am writing
this, respond to every call.

Young India , 11-9-1924, p. 300

It is profitless to find out whether the villages of
India were always what they are today. If they were
never better it is a reflection upon the ancient culture
in which we take so much pride. But if they were
never better, how is it that they have survived
centuries of decay which we see going on around us.
. . . The task before every lover of the country is
how to prevent this decay or, which is the same thing,
how to reconstruct the villages of India so that it may
be as easy for anyone to live in them as it is supposed
to be in the cities. Indeed, it is the task before every
patriot. It may be that the villagers are beyond

1-3

114

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

redemption, that rural civilization has had its day and
that the seven hundred thousand villages have to give
place to seven hundred well-ordered cities supporting
a population not of three hundred millions but thirty.
If such is to be India’s fate, even that won’t come in a
day. It must take time to wipe out a number of
villages and villagers and transform the remainder into
cities and citizens.

Harijan, 7-3-1936, p. 30

CHAPTER 28

OUR FUTURE FROM OUR PAST

I believe that the civilization India has evolved
is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal
the seeds sown by our ancestors. Rome went, Greece
shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was
broken; Japan has become westernized; of China
nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or
other, sound at the foundation. The people of Europe
learn their lessons from the writings of the men of
Greece or Rome, which exist no longer in their former
glory. In trying to learn from them, the Europeans
imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of Greece
and Rome. Such is their pitiable condition. In the
midst of all this India remains immovable and that is
her glory. It is a charge against India that her people
are so uncivilized, ignorant and stolid, that it is not
possible to induce them to adopt any changes. It is
a charge really against our merit. What we have
tested and found true on the anvil of experience, we
dare not change. Many thrust their advice upon

OUR FUTURE FROM OUR PAST 115

India and she remains steady. This is her beauty;
it is the sheet-anchor of our hope.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points
out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty
and observance of morality are convertible terms.
To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind
and our passions. . . .

We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the
more it gets the more it wants, and still remains
unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the
more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, there¬
fore, set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that
happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is
not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy
because he is poor. The rich are often seen to be
unhappy, the poor to be happy. Millions will always
remain poor. Observing all this, our ancestors dis¬
suaded us from luxuries and pleasures. We have
managed with the same kind of plough as existed
thousands of years ago. We have retained the same
kind of cottages that we had in former times, and our
indigenous education remains the same as before.
We have had no system of life-corroding competition.
Each followed his own occupation or trade, and
charged a regulation wage. It is not that we did
not know how to invent machinery, but our fore¬
fathers knew that, if we set our hearts after such
things, we would become slaves and lose our moral
fibre. They, therefore, after due deliberation decided
that we should only do what we could with our hands
and feet. They saw that our real happiness and health
consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet. They
further reasoned that large cities were a snare and a
useless encumbrance and that people would not be

116

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH !

happy in them, that there would be gangs of thieves
and robbers, prostitution and vice flourishing in them,
and that poor men would be robbed by rich men.
They were, therefore, satisfied with small villages.
They saw that kings and their swords were inferior
to the sword of ethics and they, therefore, held the
sovereigns of the earth to be inferior to the rishis and
the fakirs. A nation with a constitution like this is
fitter to teach others than to learn from them. This
nation had courts, lawyers and doctors but they were
all within bounds. Everybody knew that these pro¬
fessions were not particularly superior; moreover, these
vakils and vaids did not rob people; they were con¬
sidered people’s dependents, not their masters. Justice
was tolerably fair. The ordinary rule was to avoid
courts. There were no touts to lure people into them.
This evil, too, was noticeable only in and around
capitals. The common people lived independently
and followed their agricultural occupation. They
enjoyed true Home Rule.

Hind Swaraj , (1962), pp. 61-62

Our civilization, our culture, our Swaraj depend
not upon multiplying our wants — self-indulgence, but
upon restricting our wants — self-denial.

Toung India, 6-10-1921, p. 314

I am humble enough to admit, that there is much
that we can profitably assimilate from the West.
Wisdom is no monopoly of one continent or one race.
My resistance to Western civilization is really a resis¬
tance to its indiscriminate and thoughtless imitation
based on the assumption that Asiatics are fit only to
copy everything that comes from the West. I do be¬
lieve, that if India has patience enough to go through
the fire of suffering and to resist any unlawful en-

THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

117

croachment upon her own civilization which, imperfect
though it undoubtedly is, has hitherto stood the ravages
of time, she can make a lasting contribution to the
peace and solid progress of the world.

Toung India , 11-8-1927, p. 253

My ambition is much higher than independence.
Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver
the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crush¬
ing heels of Western exploitation.

Toung India , 12-1-1928, p. 13

CHAPTER 29

THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

Perhaps never before has there been so much
speculation about the future as there is today. Will
the world always be one of violence? Will there
always be poverty, starvation, misery? Will we have
a firmer and wide belief in religion, or will the world
be godless ? If there is to be a great change in society,
how will that change be wrought? By war, or re¬
volution? Or will it come peacefully?

Different men give different answers to these
questions, each man drawing the plan of tomorrow’s
world as he hopes and wishes it to be. I answer not
only out of belief but out of conviction. The world of
tomorrow will be, must be, a society based on non¬
violence. That is the first law; out of it all other
blessings will flow. It may seem a distant goal, and
impractical Utopia. But it is not in the least un¬
obtainable, since it can be worked for here and now.
An individual can adopt the way of life of the future —

118

INDUSTRIALIZE - AND PERISH !

the non-violent way — without having to wait for others
to do so. And if an individual can do it, cannot
whole groups of individuals? Whole nations? Men
often hesitate to make a beginning, because they feel
that the objective cannot be achieved in its entirety.
This attitude of mind is precisely our greatest obstacle
to progress — an obstacle that each man, if he only
wills it, can clear away.

Equal distribution — the second great law of
tomorrow's world as I see it — grows out of non-vio¬
lence. It implies not that the world’s goods shall be
arbitrarily divided up but that each man shall have
the wherewithal to supply his natural needs, no more.
As a crude example, if one man requires a quarter-
pound of flour per week and another needs five pounds,
each should not be given arbitrarily a quarter-pound,
or five pounds; both should be able to satisfy their
wants.

Here we come to perhaps the most vital question
connected with the shaping to tomorrow’s world. How
is this equal distribution to be brought about? Must
the wealthy be dispossessed of all their holdings?

Non-violence answers no. Nothing that is violent
can be of lasting benefit to mankind. Forcible dis¬
possession would deprive society of many great gifts;
the wealthy man knows how to create and build,
his abilities must not be lost. Instead, he must be
left in possession of his wealth so that he may use what
he reasonably requires for his personal needs and act
as trustee for the remainder, to be expended for the
benefit of society. There have been and are such men.
To my mind, as soon as a man looks upon himself as
a servant of society, earns for its sake, spends for its

THE WORLD OF TOMORROW 119

sake, then his earnings are good and his business
venture is constructive.

But does not this whole idea of non-violence
imply a change in human nature? And does history
at any time record such a change? Emphatically it
does. Many an individual has turned from the mean,
personal, acquisitive point of view to one that sees
society as a whole and works for its benefit. If there
has been such a change in one man, there can be
the same change in many.

I see no poverty in the world of tomorrow, no
wars, no revolutions, no bloodshed. And in that
world there will be a faith in God greater and deeper
than ever in the past. The very existence of the world,
in a broad sense, depends on religion. All attempts
to root it out will fail.

Condensed from the Liberty

Independence is and ought to be as much the ideal
of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.
Without inter-relation with society he cannot realize
his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism.
His social interdependence enables him to test his faith
and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality. If
man were so placed or could so place himself as to be
absolutely above all dependence on his fellow-beings
he would become so proud and arrogant as to be a
veritable burden and nuisance to the world. Depen¬
dence on society teaches him the lesson of humility.
That a man ought to be able to satisfy most of his
essential needs himself is obvious; but it is no less
obvious to me that when self-sufficiency is .carried to
the length of isolating oneself from society it almost
amounts to sin. A man cannot become self-sufficient

120

INDUSTRIALIZE — AND PERISH !

even in respect of all the various operations from the
growing of cotton to the spinning of the yarn. He has
at some stage or other to take the aid of the members
of his family. And if one may take help from one’s
own family why not from one’s neighbours? Or
otherwise what is the significance of the great saying*
‘The world is my family’?

Young India , 21-3-1929, p. 93

• '

1

'

• r

•xt

OTHER BOOKS
OF

GENERAL INTEREST

Rs.P.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak 7.00

Conquest of the Serpent 3.00

Ganclhian Techniques in

the Modem World 1.00

Gandhi Faces the Storm 1.00

Gandhi’s Challenge to

Christianity 1.50

Gandhi’s First Struggle in

India 2.00

Gopal Krishna Gokhale 8.00

Kasturba 1.50

Mahatma Gandhi —

A Prophetic Voice 2.50

Mahatma Gandhi
— The Early Phase 25.00

My Memorable Moments
with Bapu 0.50

Seven Months with

Mahatma Gandhi 4.00

The Ascetic of Gujarat 0.25

The Big Idol 0.75

The Coiled Serpent 6.00

The Educational Philosophy
of Mahatma Gandhi 4.00

The End of an Epoch 1.00

The Great Trial 1.00

The Lonely Pilgrim 3.00

The Political Philosophy of
Mahatma Gandhi 6.00

Two Memorable Trials of

Mahatma Gandhi 1.25

Which Way Lies Hope? 2.00

Postage etc . extra

Navajivan Trust, Ahmedahad-14

SOME OF OUR IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS

BY MAHATMA GANDHI

GANDHIJI EXPECTS

Compiled by H. M. Vyas

This collection represents Gandhiji’s expecta¬
tions regarding the governance of India. They come
handy at the present juncture when the funda¬
mentals are nearly being lost sight of, and politicians
and public men appear to act from mixed motives.
Pages vii, 190 Price Rs. 3 Postage etc. 90 P.

BY GENE SHARP

GANDHI WIELDS THE WEAPON
OF MORAL POWER

(Three Case Histories)

[Foreword by Dr. Albert Einstein]

The author gives three instances from India’s
non-violent struggle of how Gandhiji successfully
used spiritual laws to overcome hatred and strife by
bringing about justice and peace. One is in the eco¬
nomic sphere of freeing Champaran peasants; the
other is in the political field of waging war against
alien rule, while the third is for removing hatred
between religious groups of Hindus and Muslims.
Satyagraha, as the author suggests, ranks as the most
unique contribution to the philosophy and technique
of revolution.

Pages xxiv, 316 Price Rs. 5.00 Postage etc. Re. 1.10

BY RICHARD B. GREGG

A PHILOSOPHY OF INDIAN ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT

This book is an attempt to state and explain a
philosophy of Indian economic development which is
peculiarly Indian because of the impress of the fresh
ideas of Mahatma Gandhi.

Pages vii, 232 Price Rs. 2.50 Postage etc. Re. 1.00

Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad-14